


Do All Things But Forget

by wickedthoughts



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel Abaddon (Supernatural), Angel Crowley (Supernatural), Blasphemy, Blood, Brainwashing, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Castiel in Alternate Vessels, Character Study, Episode: s08e17 Goodbye Stranger - The Crypt Scene, Euthanasia, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Leviathans, Manipulation, Memory Alteration, Mind Control, Minor Character Death, Multi, Non-Consensual Kissing, Pining, Pre-Canon, Purgatory, Reapers, Reapers are not Angels, Sam's Hell Trials, Self-Harm, Sharing a Body, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Unrequited Castiel/Dean Winchester, Vessel Consent Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 10:40:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4826015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedthoughts/pseuds/wickedthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When your entire existence revolves around your mission, it's important to remember what the mission really is. </p><p>(Or, if angels weren't meant to feel or choose, then why can they do both so passionately?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do All Things But Forget

**Author's Note:**

> Starts off as Pre-Canon, moves into Canon-Compliant, then ends with a Canon-Divergent Fix-it for the end of Season 8. A familiarity with Seasons 4-8, especially 8, will be helpful. As always, please read the warnings.
> 
> Thank you to my wonderful partner for proofreading, even though they've only seen a handful of _Supernatural_ episodes. All continuity errors in regards to canon are my own.
> 
> Title from ["Eloisa to Abelard"](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174158) by Alexander Pope.

* * *

_< Hello, my Destroyer.>_

_< Hello, my Pleasant One. What is the mission?>_

_< As it always was, my Destroyer. As it always will be. We will protect that which our Father has created, each in our own way.>_

They danced through the cosmos together. Rejuvenation and entropy mingled in their wake. Their grace shrieked with the ecstasy of purpose.

Time had little meaning for them then, at the beginning of things, but when she looked back on those days together, Naomi knew that their time had been too short. Heaven had unraveled so quickly, and she had been unable to fix it.

*

There were only a handful of angels to whom the Four Who Have Seen God had given direct orders. Naomi had been one of those, and one of the few who had been privileged to speak to all four of them. Usually it was through Raphael, although Michael had favored her with his presence as well. She had never spoken more than a smattering of words with Gabriel before his disappearance. As for the Lightbringer, the vague pleasantries they had exchanged turned frosty and then ceased. Because of Abaddon.

Her name wasn’t always Abaddon. In those days she was called Sheol and she was an angel of destruction. She caught Naomi’s attention when they were paired together, Naomi’s orders to _Repair that which is broken_ and Sheol’s to _Eliminate that which cannot be saved._ In this way, they protected and maintained what God had made. Their Father’s creation was vast, its inhabitants numerous, and it needed constant attention and correction. The Darkness, the Mother of Monsters, and the threat of Her hungriest children had all come before Naomi’s beginning, but she was told of them and how they necessitated her purpose. She fixed atomic imbalances, saved dying stars and their systems. That which she could not fix, Sheol destroyed.

As orderly as Naomi was, Sheol was chaos incarnate. Her wavelengths quivered with joy when Naomi called upon her services, quick to assuage Naomi’s frustrations at failure while chafing at the bit to perform her own function. Watching Sheol’s work, as brutal and beautiful as she was, made up for Naomi’s inability to repair that which Sheol obliterated. They’d had no word for love in those early days, but looking back Naomi recognized that she’d loved her partner in every nuance of that small, simple word.

When Naomi was given her first angel to fix she was determined to succeed. Xe was a soldier injured in battle against one of the pockets of Leviathan that had escaped banishment to Purgatory. Two Rit Zien brought xem to Naomi in the white, clean void space she and Sheol had been given to perform this duty. The medics had attended to the soldier’s wounds, but could not mend the damage done to xyr mind. That was Naomi’s job, even if she had never done it before. Even if she was unsure if the task fell under her jurisdiction, but the archangels had commanded it. Which meant that God had commanded it.

 _< Please!>_ the soldier begged her, essence oozing with the black infection that was killing xem. _< Please help me!>_

Naomi combined her wavelengths with the other angel’s, learning xyr name was Jophiel. She’d never prodded a sentient being’s mind like this, and she found it exciting. Neurons fired around her, Leviathan malice consuming them, inserting itself into Jophiel’s synaptic clefts, disrupting them. Naomi fought and fought, but the damage was too severe. Sheol pulled her out before the Leviathan could infect her, too.

_< It’s too late, Pleasant One.>_

_< No, I can still fix this!>_ Naomi argued, knowing it was futile. _< I can save xem!>_

_< Let me do my job now.>_

Naomi was unsettled to hear the giddy anticipation in Sheol’s tone. Surely Sheol wouldn’t destroy Jophiel herself? They could call back the Rit Zien, they were responsible for the merciful termination of life, so the Reapers could then do their job-

 _< They gave xem to us. You and me, Naomi>_ Sheol’s impatience shone through. _< What you cannot fix, I destroy. That is the way, and you know it.>_

_< But->_

She wanted to ask Jophiel, but the soldier’s grace was nigh-indiscernible through the obscuring Leviathan gloom. Sheol was right. Naomi grudgingly acquiesced.

Sheol tore Jophiel asunder, not as painlessly as the Rit Zien would have, but as artfully as she ever did. The Leviathan plague was decimated with xem. Naomi didn’t want to admit how electrifying the sight was. They mourned their sibling briefly, in the preordained manner their Father had dictated. The end of existence in pursuit of His will. It was sad, and it was good. Now it was done.

 _< It was right,>_ Raphael told her later. _< You and Sheol performed as you should have. Well done.>_

Raphael was the archangel responsible for healing. If they approved, surely it was good. Raphael told her that in the future Michael would be sending her more angels to help.

 _< Only those that desire it,>_ they assured her. _< Those that do not can opt for termination.>_

 _< I think I hurt xem,>_ Naomi admitted, wanting all the facts on the table before the archangels started sending her more angels. _< And- and I failed. Sheol had to destroy xem.>_

 _< We have the utmost faith in you,>_ Raphael said before they left. Naomi swelled with forbidden pride at the words. The feeling itself was not prohibited, but not to the degree she was feeling it. Angels were allowed to feel, but not to be consumed by feeling. Not to let feelings cloud or distract from their mission. Those that felt too much had to report it to the Counselors and work on doing better.

 _< See?>_ said Sheol when Raphael had departed. She had been there for the entire conversation, but Raphael had not addressed her. That was the hierarchy- Naomi would relay the orders to Sheol.

 _< You were right,>_ Naomi admitted.

 _< I’m always right,>_ Sheol laughed. Her pride was frightening. Frightening and beautiful.

*

It took Naomi two more failures before she perfected the art of fixing her siblings. Sheol destroyed the first two, and Naomi found it was easier to watch their demises this time around. After that, Naomi’s track record was perfect. Every angel who requested her service came out better. They thanked her profusely while Sheol sulked.

 _< I have nothing to do,>_ she complained petulantly.

 _< That’s not true,>_ Naomi said distractedly, running through her schedule in her mind. As word spread of her, more and more angels were asking to see her. Those that were wounded in the mind, those that felt too much, those that were having doubts and fears. The Counselors might soon be obsolete.

 _< What do I do, then? Tell me,>_ Sheol spat. _< Watch you? Encourage you? Take pleasure from the ones who squirm and scream?>_

_< It only hurts if they want it to.>_

That was true. Some angels felt they deserved the pain. Naomi had quickly learned to ignore the screams. Learned how to hold them down with her own power while she worked.

_< Those are my favorite. Their screams are delicious.>_

Naomi was unsettled again. She was finding Sheol more and more unsettling as time passed.

 _< This is our Father’s will, Destroyer,>_ she reminded Sheol. _< Would you question our Father’s will? Would you speak with the Counselors? Would you submit to my salvation?>_

 _< Never,>_ Sheol declared with conviction. _< I do not need fixing. I am perfect as I am. I simply need stimulation. To fulfill my purpose.>_

_< This is your purpose. To be my partner. My helpmeet.>_

_< This wasn’t always my purpose.>_

_< Purposes change. Missions evolve.>_

_< I am now bored always, Pleasant One. I am so bored.>_

_< You are close to blasphemy, Destroyer. Accept your duty, work to fix yourself, or choose termination. I don’t want to hear any more of this.>_

Sheol’s wavelengths recoiled from her as if they were physically battling. She silenced, but Naomi could feel Sheol’s hurt anger radiating from her, filling their void with discontent. Naomi couldn’t think too hard on it. She had too much to do.

*

 _< Have you heard, Naomi?>_ Sheol asked one day after she’d been absent for some time. Her absences were growing more frequent and Naomi had little time to reflect upon them. _< Have you heard of our Father’s newest creation?>_

Naomi was in the middle of fixing the angel Daniel, whose proclivities for drifting toward the angel Adina despite conflicting orders were getting unmanageable. He had begged for Naomi’s services in the Court of Discipline rather than face time in Heaven’s prisons.

 _< No, Sheol, I haven’t,>_ she said impatiently, chasing down a stray thought of how glorious Adina’s fluctuating grace appeared when in flight.

_< He’s placed more organic life on the planet called Earth. The same one He gave the Mother of Monsters before He locked Her in Purgatory for siding with the Leviathan.>_

_< Hmm,>_ Naomi hummed noncommittally, cornering and eradicating the thought. Daniel made a noise of distress. _< Snacks for the Alphas?>_

_< They’re saying He’s particularly invested in these cells. Jumpstarting evolution in them.>_

_< And what business is that of ours, unless it is made part of our mission?>_

_< Nothing, I suppose. I just found it interesting. I thought you’d want to know.>_

_< You thought wrong.>_

Naomi spoke more sharply than she’d intended. Daniel was proving exceptionally difficult to repair. She heard the angry rustle of Sheol’s wings as she departed. Naomi wished she could follow. Fly through the cosmos, mending and destroying as they’d done at the beginning of things. But she couldn’t. She had orders. Sheol would understand. She had to.

Daniel took her longer than usual, but when Naomi was finished with him he barely remembered Adina’s name. She took acceptable pride in her work before resting until her next angel came to her.

Later that era Sheol received new orders. She was to spend most of her time on Earth under Lucifer’s command, overseeing the new life their Father had started. Guiding it, burning away what didn’t work. Sheol glowed with anticipation, so happy once more to have a mission she found interesting. Naomi tried not to begrudge her that. Her own mission was starting to become rote, though every now and then she got an angel like Daniel who gave her a challenge. She would miss Sheol’s presence, she realized. Even with the Destroyer’s agitation and irritability, they were partners. She’d taken it for granted Sheol would always be there. Now Sheol was only to come if Naomi summoned her. Naomi knew that was an unlikely scenario. She hadn’t failed to fix an angel in eons.

_< Godspeed, my Destroyer.>_

_< Thank you. Keep up the good work, Naomi.>_

Sheol’s farewell was so formal as to be insulting. Naomi couldn’t help but feel the sting of it.

*

 _< I was right!>_ Sheol shrieked with triumphant fervor, appearing suddenly in the void and startling Naomi at her rest. _< Most of the cannon fodder thought it would be the Homo neanderthalensis, but I knew it would be the sapiens!>_

_< Cannon fodder? Is that an appropriate way to speak of our brethren?>_

Sheol ignored Naomi’s reprimand.

_< Do you even know what I’m talking about?>_

_< Yes,>_ Naomi had a vague idea. She knew that their Father had instigated a contest of sorts between the highest evolved beings in His new creation on Earth. The winner would be blessed with His favor.

 _< He’s giving them souls! Eternal life!>_ Sheol sounded bitter. _< After their mortal bodies are terminated, their souls will be allowed into Heaven. They’re saying our Father loves them best. More than us.>_

Naomi was surprised by the information, maybe even a little hurt. She didn’t let it show.

_< Who is “they”?>_

_< The Morningstar,>_ Sheol said with muted awe. _< He says our Father has big plans for these creatures. That He will use them to shake the universe to its foundations.>_

_< And? That is His business, not ours.>_

_< Why couldn’t He use us instead? We’ve done everything He asked of us, and he chooses these- these- mud monkeys?>_

_< If our Father has chosen these- Homo sapiens, so be it. Who are we to question Him?>_

_< We were here first! We loved Him first!>_

Naomi didn’t like how much sense Sheol was making. How her anger was infecting Naomi.

_< I don’t recall summoning you, Sheol.>_

Sheol’s anger rippled, shifting to her former partner.

_< No, you wouldn’t. Because you didn’t. You never do.>_

_< I have had no need of you.>_

_< No,>_ Sheol spat bitterly. _< You wouldn’t have had need of me, would you? Not even to greet me. To ask me of my work. To ask me of **me.** >_

Naomi was completely floored. Of course she cared about Sheol, was glad she’d found fulfillment in her work. But her orders had not included summoning Sheol to make conversation. Why didn’t Sheol understand that?

Sheol didn’t understand. Nor did she understand Naomi’s silence now. Her fiery anger became icy indifference.

_< Should your mission require you to summon me, I will come to you. Beyond that, you will never see me again.>_

_< Sheol- >_ the threat of Sheol’s words shook Naomi more than she’d thought possible.

_< I have found new purpose. The Lightbringer shows his gratitude. His affection. Lucifer is the partner I need, not you.>_

Sheol departed before Naomi could speak, defend herself or apologize. Not that she would have, she reflected as she felt Sheol’s absence in a way she hadn’t for thousands of years. She was not good at expressing herself, for herself. Her talents lay elsewhere. That didn’t mean she didn’t care for Sheol. Why couldn’t her Destroyer understand that?

Naomi’s brooding was interrupted by Lucifer himself. Resentment stabbed through her, sharp and astringent. She couldn’t overcome it.

 _< Naomi,>_ he greeted her. _< I hope you are well?>_

 _< Yes, of course,>_ she managed to live up to her name, keeping her tone light and sweet. _< How may I serve our Father?>_

 _< A sister requires correction,>_ Lucifer revealed the angel he’d been carrying inside his grace. Naomi recognized one of her regulars. Leah, a doubter.

 _< Naomi, please,>_ Leah implored piteously. _< I am afraid. I do not see the purpose of these new creatures of our Father’s. I am jealous and I do not wish to be. I wish to be obedient. To have faith again.>_

 _< As do we all,>_ Lucifer intoned, but Naomi thought there was insincerity in his words. She got to work on Leah as soon as the Lightbringer departed. She knew her way around Leah’s grace well at this point. It was an easy fix.

*

Naomi stood among the entirety of the Host in the void space of Heaven’s Great Hall. The angel’s wavelengths were abuzz. They had not all been summoned together since the beginning of time.

Three of the Four who Have Seen God were at the head of the throng, raised above the crowd on the facsimile of a dais. The Lightbringer was conspicuously missing and the remaining Three were humming with anxiety. Naomi was very close to the foot of the dais and could observe them all. Michael was stern and determined, Raphael was a mask of false serenity, and Gabriel radiated heartache. Silence fell over the Hall when Michael addressed the Host.

_< Brethren. Behold the dawn of a new era. Our Father, in His infinite wisdom, has declared his new creation be called humanity. They are to be protected, honored, and cherished. Loved.>_

He paused as the angels buzzed once more at the unfamiliar word. Then he made a strange creature appear on the dais before him. A small, glistening thing contained in a smooth, fragile form. Naomi was fascinated.

_< This is the soul of one of these humans. The first to succumb to death. Her name is Lilith and our Father has declared that we kneel before her to show our obedience to His will.>_

The Host knelt immediately, Naomi with them. She knelt without question, grace genuflecting in submission. The three archangels were kneeling as well, uniform in their obeisance-

_< And what of the Lightbringer?>_

The question rang through the Hall defiantly. Naomi recognized the voice immediately, and she quivered with fear for her former partner. To the left of Naomi’s position, also close to the dais, Sheol was upright among the kneeling Host. She wasn’t alone. Many angels stood with her. Naomi recognized Azazel, Belial, and Samael flanking her. Mammon was behind them, shifting uneasily, but standing nonetheless.

 _< How dare you?>_ Michael straightened threateningly, stepping in front of the human soul called Lilith. _< How dare you disobey?>_

 _< Where is the Lightbringer?>_ Sheol screamed, fear and righteous fury glowing inside her. The other rebels took up the call. To Naomi’s horror, other kneeling angels began to stand and call out the question until almost a third of the Host was in solidarity with Sheol and her band.

 _< Lucifer has chosen disobedience,>_ Michael was frightening in his anger. Raphael and Gabriel rose behind him, uneasily. They were in pain, Naomi realized. _< He refused to kneel and has been cast from Heaven and our Father’s presence. As will you all if you do not kneel.>_

Michael was also in anguish, but he channeled it into purpose better than the other two. God’s firstborn, forever loyal.

 _< We will never kneel to that!>_ Sheol declared. _< Tell us where the Lightbringer is and we will go to him. We will kneel to him, and we will never look back.>_

The rebels murmured in terrified agreement. Naomi watched as her home fractured around her. It was the end of everything she’d ever known, yet the most she felt was for Sheol. She didn’t want to see Sheol terminated, even if that was the just punishment for her utter disobedience to their Father. Naomi knew that was a form of disobedience, too, her desire to save Sheol who had now proven herself unsalvageable. She didn’t care. She now had the word for how she felt about Sheol. Love. She loved her. She didn’t want to see the Destroyer destroyed. She shivered at her own blasphemy.

 _< Lucifer has disappeared from our awareness,>_ Michael’s grief was undisguised. _< We will track him down and deal with him. As you will be dealt with now. Host, those that are still loyal and true to our Father, destroy the traitors. Show no mercy!>_

The command had no sooner been uttered than violent chaos erupted in the Great Hall. Michael’s wavelengths leapt from the dais at Sheol, Gabriel behind him. Raphael remained where they were, guarding the human soul that Naomi couldn’t help but feel bitterness towards. That pathetic little thing had caused all this. It was the reason her family was tearing itself apart before her eyes and she could do nothing to stop or fix it. She was about to see her eldest brother destroy her dearest sister. She was frozen, and the shrieks of her siblings fighting and dying around her did nothing to move her.

But Sheol surprised her. Instead of confronting Michael, she ducked and weaved with Azazel in a clearly practiced maneuver. They left Belial and Samael to deal with Michael and Gabriel- Naomi saw that Mammon had fled as soon as Michael had issued his order- and took off for the dais. Azazel sprang at Raphael and the two fought while Sheol enveloped the human soul and fled, disappearing with a roar of pinions. Naomi could barely comprehend what she’d witnessed, so impiously glad was she that Sheol was safe.

 _< Sheol has the soul!>_ Azazel cried, disentangling himself from Raphael’s grace. _< Depart and regroup! Find the Lightbringer!>_

He disappeared, as did the rest of the surviving rebels, the Great Hall echoing with their departing wingbeats. A good half of the rebels had been destroyed, the impression of their wings burned into the floor of the Great Hall. Cries of pain, both mental and physical, remained in their wake as the loyal angels found themselves in confused disarray. The Rit Zien made their way through the crowd, doing their jobs. Naomi saw the glows of both healing and euthanasia.

_< Naomi.>_

Michael called to her from where he stood over the remains of Samael. She startled, wondering if Michael had seen her hesitation and her blasphemy. Her love for Sheol despite her betrayal.

_< Yes, sir?>_

_< Your services will be required shortly, I must confer with our Father. Retire to your space and await further instruction.>_

_< Yes, sir,>_ Naomi agreed with relief and departed for her void. Once there, she quivered restlessly, processing what had just happened. Her space was so barren, so bright and sterile. Sheol had complained of it before, but put up with it because Naomi needed it to work-

Sheol would never be here again. She’d never see Sheol again.

Regret thrummed inside her. Sheol was gone. She was gone. So were a third of their siblings, dead or fled, but she felt the most for her partner. Former partner. Who she’d driven away long before. Straight into the arms of the Lightbringer.

Maybe this was her fault.

After some time Raphael brought the first of many angels who desired fixing. Uncontrollable pain swelled through the ranks. Naomi found it a welcome distraction from her own.

*

The next millennium was filled with many changes. It was discovered that the majority of humans could not withstand an angel’s true form without damage or death, so God established the practice of vessels. Certain bloodlines, favored bloodlines, would be ordained to hold angels when they needed to go to Earth and walk among the humans. Only if the vessels agreed, of course. Any chosen human could refuse entry to an angel. A subset of the cherubim were appointed to make sure these bloodlines came to be. Naomi wasn’t sure why it was acceptable to manipulate certain humans to feel love and sire offspring, but not to force them into containing angels. But it their Father had ordained it, then it must make sense.

The millennium was also filled with fighting and killing. Naomi was kept updated by Raphael and Michael. The rebels had found Lucifer. Worse, they had taken the guise of serpents and managed to get inside the Garden where their Father’s favorite creations were being kept safe. Most of humanity had rejected their Father’s love, and He was upset. He had decreed that any human who willingly defied him would be cast into a new creation of His called Hell. A place of isolation and sadness.

The soldiers were systematically hunting down and destroying the rebels. Angelic warfare had evolved as well, angels forging simple weapons out of their own grace to fight better when in vessels. The only thing that could kill another angel.

They hadn’t found Sheol. Naomi tried and failed not to feel relief about that.

 _< We need you to get inside the remaining angel’s minds,>_ Michael directed her one day. _< We need to know if any rebels remain in our ranks.>_

Naomi was slightly uncomfortable with the idea, but she did it anyway. Every single angel was brought to her void and she poked and prodded at their thoughts to make certain of their loyalty. Word spread among the Host, and some of the angels chafed at the idea of being subjected to Naomi’s services against their will. Naomi came up with a solution for that. She scrubbed the minds of those she had already inspected, making them forget who she was. Soon the only angels who knew her name were the three remaining archangels. She liked the anonymity. It made her feel safe. Her mission had evolved again, and she settled into her new role of secrecy. She found that her old way of combining her essence with her subject’s didn’t work when the subject was unaware or unwilling. She forged a crude tool out of her grace, like the soldiers had. After all, she was a warrior of heaven as well.

Naomi was the one who discovered that God’s most trusted commander aside from Michael had been responsible for letting Lucifer and his rebels into the Garden to contaminate it. She was expecting Michael to smite the traitor as soon as she relayed the information, but he surprised her. Gadreel’s trial was well-publicized among the Host. He was found guilty of negligence and fraternizing with the enemy. The Three debated having Naomi re-educate him, and she felt the thrill of power and purpose at the idea of reprogramming one who had no desire to be reprogrammed. In the end, Michael decreed that Gadreel be locked in the deepest dungeon of Heaven’s prison. Naomi was disappointed, but she understood. This punishment was more effective in getting through to the Host, since none of them knew who she was or what her job was anymore. A better deterrent for those contemplating disobedience.

Naomi also found two spies in their midst. Eremiel and Nanael had been loyal to Lucifer all along. Michael summarily executed them, as soon as Naomi found their true motives. His work was not as artful as Sheol’s. Her space felt tainted by the remains of the traitors. Still, their terminations gave her some peace. What she had discovered in their minds was disturbing. Lucifer had managed to twist the human soul Sheol had stolen into something new. Something wrong.

 _< Demon,>_ the foreign word rattled around Eremiel’s tortured mind. _< Lilith, Lucifer’s first demon.>_

First implied more to come. Her interrogation of Nanael verified it.

 _< The Lightbringer will take those souls God has cast into Hell,>_ she revealed to Naomi against her will. _< He will create an army of demons and we will march against God and Heaven. We will take back what is rightfully ours.>_

_< You say “we”. But you are not human, or demon. You are an angel.>_

_< We can become like humans. Lucifer has discovered this. His most loyal lieutenants have removed their grace and been reborn in human flesh. When they die, they will become the most powerful of demons. Soon, all of the Lightbringer’s angels will fall to Earth.>_

Lucifer’s most loyal lieutenants. Naomi’s next question was involuntary.

_< Does that include Sheol?>_

_< Of course. She and Azazel were the first to rip out their grace. She walks the Earth now, aware of her identity and destiny, and the humans fear her.>_

She reported it all dutifully to Michael. She felt nothing at Nanael’s death. She feared she would feel nothing when she heard of Sheol’s. She hated that fear.

*

With the information Naomi had gleaned from Eremiel and Nanael, Michael was able to apprehend Lucifer as he harvested souls from Hell. The battle was long and arduous. When it was over, Lucifer was locked away in a cage that had been specially constructed to contain him. Michael placed it in the lowest layer of Hell and cast the demons Lucifer had created down on top of his cage. The strongest ones escaped easily, but the angels found that even the strongest demons could be obliterated by a concentrated blast of grace. Naomi accepted the fact that Sheol was probably dead, melted away on an Earthly battlefield without ceremony. She’d never know.

Hell changed from isolation to torture. Fire and lamentation. Their Father eased up on the humans He sent there. Only the worst were condemned to Hell, or those who chose to go for whatever reason. The rest were welcomed into Heaven. Souls were powerful and Heaven needed to have the most, to stay at the top of the cosmic pecking order. The gods who had come before their Father’s rise to power were growing angry with the turmoil His children were causing, but with the amount of human souls Heaven was receiving they could do little but murmur resentfully and take the few souls allotted to them.

Gabriel disappeared just after the Lightbringer’s imprisonment. No one knew where he had gone, or even if he was still alive. Rumors flew among the host as Michael and Raphael grieved in different ways. Michael seemed almost indifferent, but Naomi knew better. He missed his brother. Raphael missed him even more.

 _< I require your services,>_ Raphael appeared in her space one day. _< I require repair.>_

Naomi was startled, but flattered that one of the Three- no, now Two- would ask for her to work on them.

 _< Are you certain?>_ she asked them.

 _< Please,>_ Raphael stilled their wavelengths before her. They were in so much pain it made her want to lament in solidarity. _< Our brother is gone I know not where, and our Father- >_

They stopped themself violently. Naomi wondered what they had been about to reveal. She prepped her instrument, a gleaming silver apparatus that became more refined with every angel she corrected.

 _< There are areas you must not go,>_ Raphael warned before she began. _< It is forbidden for you to know all that Michael and I know. I will tell you when you broach one of those areas in me.>_

 _< Of course,>_ she said, inserting the tool at the peak of their grace. Raphael writhed in agony, but made no sound.

 _< It only hurts if you want it to,>_ she recited out of habit. It wasn’t true anymore, and that had bothered her at first, but no longer. _< It only hurts if you fight me.>_

 _< Perhaps I want it to hurt, Naomi,>_ Raphael rasped. _< Perhaps I deserve the pain.>_

 _< That is for you to decide,>_ she told them, digging deeper while making sure to avoid those areas where Raphael had placed warnings to turn back. She obeyed them, curious as she was. She had her failings, she could admit them, but she was ultimately obedient. It was her best feature, she told herself.

 _< You are a strange one, Naomi,>_ Raphael observed as she worked. _< Full of contradiction. Loyal, but full of questions. You are allowed more freedom than any other angel in order to take that freedom from the others. You absorb it from us, this free will that our Father has suddenly decided is His favorite trait. That he has given the humans, but denied to us. This is why he no longer favors us. Why he hides his face from us now.>_

How was that fair? Naomi remembered Sheol’s angry words. She tried not to agree with them. Free will was not a new concept to her, but it was distasteful. She hadn’t realized that in her work she had been taking it from the other angels, incorporating it into herself. What did that make her?

_< If that is the case, if I am to be cursed with more freedom, then I will- will choose do as I am told. What I was made to do.>_

_< So, do it.>_

She did. Raphael left their doubts and anger inside the tool made of her grace. She began to disconnect herself from it.

*

The rumors abounded, and Naomi knew them to be true even if she chose not to dwell on them or their implications. Their Father had left. He was no longer in Heaven, and if anyone knew his location they weren’t telling. It hurt, of course it hurt, but the only thing to do was to keep moving forward with their mission. Order had to be maintained. Maybe, if He saw their obedience, their loyalty, He would return.

 _< You are to debrief the Scribe,>_ Michael ordered her. _< He knew the most of God’s plans. Perhaps he knows where He went, or might help us narrow down where He might go.>_

Naomi wanted to find their Father as much as Michael did. She couldn’t wait to get her instrument in Metatron’s mind, help restore the order of Heaven. But the Scribe ran.

 _< Just like Gabriel ran,>_ Raphael told her during one of their frequent sessions, revealing the truth she had suspected. There were no secret areas inside Raphael anymore. _< Just like our Father ran.>_

They were in so much pain. Had been for so long. Naomi had an idea and implemented it before she had completely thought it through. She had erased memories and feelings before, but she had never created them. Now she did.

 _< They didn’t run,>_ she soothed, silver tool dancing through Raphael’s tortured grace. _< Gabriel, our Father, they didn’t run. They’re dead. They loved you, loved us all, but they’re dead.>_

 _< Dead,>_ Raphael whispered, and while they were still sad, their grief was diminished with the finality of death. _< They’re dead, and I miss them. But they would want me to continue in the faith.>_

_< Yes. The mission.>_

The words meant nothing to her anymore, but they comforted Raphael so she said them.

 _< The mission,>_ Raphael agreed serenely. _< Before His death, our Father told us His plan for the end of the Earth.>_

 _< Oh?>_ Naomi was curious.

_< Paradise. It will come after all the suffering, the time He called the Apocalypse. Once all the traitors are dead and Michael has defeated Lucifer, there will be peace on Earth. It will be incorporated into Heaven and there will be paradise forever. Harmony.>_

For the first time in a long time, Naomi thought of Sheol. A pang of longing hit her. Paradise sounded wonderful, and perhaps then their Father would return, but she knew Sheol would not be included in that paradise. Without Sheol she felt incomplete. Like she couldn’t have peace if Sheol was destroyed to achieve it.

 _< The end and the beginning,>_ Raphael continued.

 _< It sounds perfect,>_ she lied.

_< It will be.>_

After Raphael left, Naomi completely shut herself off from the part of her grace that incorporated her instrument. She didn’t want to feel any of those excess doubts or fears anymore. Her own were more than enough.

*

Angels were taking vessels more frequently now, and keeping them even in Heaven. Human bodies suffused in the grace of their angels walked around Heaven. Naomi had to learn to work on angels inside their vessels, but she found that easier. Vessels contained her siblings’ essence, made it easier to find and manipulate the parts she needed. Michael was sending more and more angels to her. She didn’t question it.

Naomi was given a handful of angels to assist her. Bartholomew proved the most adept at re-education, even if she found him insufferable. Eventually she gave him his own void space to work on the simplest corrections. Esper, Ion, Nathaniel, and Jehoel were hopeless at fixing angels, but Naomi had other tasks she could delegate to them. Aside from Michael and Raphael, they became the only angels to remember her name. The Intelligence Division, Michael called them. Naomi did not enjoy having direct authority over so many. She would have preferred a single partner as before, or maybe just to do everything herself, but that was no longer possible. She tried her best to direct and delegate, but it was never her forte.

Her five remained envesselled like most of the angels in Heaven. Naomi didn’t. Like the archangels, she had yet to take a vessel. She couldn’t help but feel embittered towards humanity. The creatures their Father had preferred over his first children. She had no desire to mingle with one, or even to speak with one to implore it to let her in. Her business was in Heaven, not on Earth, so it wasn’t an issue.

 _< Why do you all keep your vessels?>_ she asked the soldier Balthazar during a debriefing of his garrison after a particularly difficult mission in the Nile Delta. _< Why not give them up when your time on Earth is complete and you return home?>  
_

“It can be difficult to obtain a vessel,” Balthazar was one that fought her. His vessel’s dark skin shone with sweat and his teeth were gritted in pain. “Once we find one, we like to keep them.”

She could tell that he was holding something back from her. She prodded deeper and Balthazar screamed, his true voice reverberating from his vessel’s limited vocal cords.

“And we hope that our Father will love us again! He loves these humans most, but maybe if we become like them He will love us, too!”

Naomi’s sympathy rose, her wavelengths clenched.

_< Why not rip out your grace? Be born inside one of them? Wouldn’t that bring you closer?>_

“Like the First Fallen? The traitors?” Balthazar was indignant. “That is not part of the plan. We may take vessels, but becoming as human is blasphemy! We are not human, but we can be like them. ”

 _< Of course,>_ Naomi sighed. The logic was faulty, but she could understand how the angels had reached the conclusion.

“Only- ” Balthazar hesitated. “If He loves the humans so greatly, then why were our orders to kill so many of them?”

It didn’t make that much sense to Naomi either, but the order had come directly from Michael. The Pharaoh had openly defied their Father. Examples needed to be made. She explained this all to Balthazar, until he calmed.

After he’d been corrected and dismissed, the next member of his garrison entered her space. This was one of the particularly difficult garrisons, Naomi remembered. She’d seen a few of them often, beyond routine maintenance. Their leader, Anael, was smart and courageous, but full of questions that had to be erased or assuaged with lies. Their specialist was called Uriel, another angel of destruction that Naomi found herself fascinated with if only because of her unshakeable memories of Sheol. He had harbored sympathies for the Lightbringer, another commonality between Destroyers Naomi had found, but she had managed to eradicate them satisfactorily. Balthazar had a tendency to drift toward hedonism, Hester toward wrath, and Inias toward mercy he was not authorized to show. Finally, there was Castiel, the angel who stood before her now, envesselled in a the body of a dark-skinned young man, barely out of boyhood, wearing nothing but a short linen skirt. He shifted nervously, awaiting her orders. Naomi sighed. On top of his garrison’s routine debriefing, Castiel would require deeper rehabilitation this session.

 _< Hello, Castiel,>_ she said pleasantly. He cocked his vessel’s head to the side quizzically.

If possible, Castiel was the most difficult member of this garrison. Perhaps the most difficult angel she’d worked on. While Anael’s questions were different each time, Castiel had the most resilient mind she’d ever encountered. The same doubts and feelings she thought she’d expunged would take root in other areas and he’d be back in the white void with her, the same song and dance over and over again. It didn’t help that he was both a wriggler and a screamer.

“Who are you? Where am I?”

Always the same questions. It would have become tiresome if she hadn’t viewed him with the thrill of a challenger. She was good at her job, and she would fix what ailed this strange angel yet. He couldn’t elude her forever.

_< My name is Naomi.>_

That was the trigger phrase she’d encoded into every angel’s subconscious. It immediately caused them to obey her, as well as forget who she was and what she’d done the moment they left her space.

 _< Welcome,>_ she continued. _< You are here for correction.>_

“Correction?” he asked slowly, her suggestion taking hold of his motor functions.

 _< You are suffering,>_ Naomi approached him with her instrument. Castiel eyed it warily, unable to move his vessel’s feet or his own grace. _< I’m going to fix that.>_

“I’m suffering?” his mind was becoming more pliant. “Oh, yes. I suffer. I think?”

She called for Ion. Castiel was one of the angels that required someone to hold him down while she worked. He was one of the seraphim, wavelengths of his true form powerful and burning even contained in his small vessel. Ion held the boy’s arms behind his back, his own vessel’s pale face moued in distaste for the task. Naomi remembered that Ion had been pulled from Castiel’s garrison for this job. Soldier’s loyalty ran deep, as it should be. She’d have to correct Ion when she was done with his former garrison. Not enough that he forgot everything, but enough to appease his unease.

Castiel changed vessels more than any angel Naomi had seen- he’d confessed that he enjoyed wooing them into saying yes- but a common trait they shared was that they all ended up bleeding as she worked on them. This boy was no exception. His wide brown eyes dripped with blood by the time she’d finished. At least she could put the human to sleep while she worked so he felt nothing. It was bad enough to hear Castiel’s screams, she didn’t need to add the boy’s to the pounding in her grace. She could barely hear herself think. Ion’s grimace had expanded to the entire lower half of his vessel’s jaw and his eyes were clenched tightly shut.

She dug and dug, eradicating Castiel’s latest problem. He’d fallen in love with a human. Again. This had to be the third or fourth time it had happened, and Naomi took it as a personal affront. After the Nephilim scourge had been eradicated a few thousand years ago, Michael had forbidden carnal relationships between angels and humans. Later he broadened the decree to include any feelings of love or lust. It occurred more often than most angels cared to admit. Naomi figured that it had to do, as most things did, with their Father’s love for the creatures. Angels still wanted to be like Him, desperate to earn his approval and reclaim his attention. Naomi had long given up that hope. She’d seen the way Michael had given up on God. The way Raphael requested her services more and more frequently, their despair growing even if they eagerly believed the sweet lies she made for them. Naomi served her purpose. Without order, Heaven would be lost. What remained of their family would be lost. She would rather die than let that happen.

She wiped the last traces of the young Egyptian woman to whom Castiel had taken a fancy from the seraph’s mind. She healed his vessel’s eyes and allowed Ion to release his hold. The boy smiled distantly for Castiel and left with the rush of wings.

“How long do you think it’ll last this time?” Ion grumbled. Naomi had been thinking the same thing, but she took offense nonetheless.

 _< Take pity on that one,>_ she snapped with an irritable stirring of ethereal feathers. _< By the will of our Father, Castiel’s re-education will finally take root and germinate.>_

“By the will of our Father,” Ion repeated without conviction. “I don’t know why we don’t just terminate him. He’ll never be fixed, it would be for the best.”

Naomi bristled again, but she let it be. She couldn’t deny that she’d had similar thoughts. That she’d thought of Sheol standing behind her like in the old days, suggesting that destruction was the only recourse for one as irreparable as Castiel. She placed her thoughts and feelings behind that veneer she so expertly maintained. She still had the rest of the troublesome garrison to inspect. The sound of wings announced the arrival of her next patient.

_< Hello, Hester. My name is Naomi. You are here for correction.>_

*

According to human measurements of time, Naomi took a vessel for the first time in 573 BCE. As with most of her frustrations, this headache- a feeling she now had a concrete, human word for- had to do with Castiel. The seraph had simply disappeared, like Gabriel, the Scribe, and his Father Himself. In Castiel’s case, however, there was a lead. He wasn’t answering his summons, but Anael and Uriel had found him in the human city of Babylon. All their attempts to reason with him or drag him back to Heaven by force had proved useless, so Naomi was called upon to retrieve him. Only she could speak the trigger phrase to reclaim him.

_< But why?>_

She made sure to keep her tone respectful when questioning Michael’s emissary. Zachariah was a particularly unpleasant member of the cherubim who had gained favor from the senior archangel. He had been speaking to Naomi on behalf of Michael for quite some time now. Zachariah was another angel who had no use for vessels and his essence fluctuated between his faces, the wavelengths taking the appearance first of an androgynous human, then a maned lion, then a bull, then a sharp-beaked eagle.

 _< Are you questioning Michael, and by extension our Father?>_ Zachariah’s booming voices inquired with undisguised hostility.

 _< Of course not,>_ Naomi assured him pleasantly, and none would guess her desire to rip the horns off the bull and shove them down the throat of the lion. _< I merely wonder why we do not terminate this runaway like we do all the others. Why the fuss over this one?>_

She wanted Castiel brought home alive, because of that challenge he still presented her, but she was willing to give it up if it meant she didn’t have to go down to Earth herself. She couldn’t send any of her five, not even Bartholomew, because only she had worked on Castiel.

_< I had that thought myself, Naomi, but you know what I didn’t do? I didn’t question the will of our Father.>_

_< Yes, sir,>_ Naomi answered him in that same pleasant voice as he left. She missed talking with the senior archangel himself. He had always afforded her an indulgent respect that Zachariah lacked.

She found a woman of the appropriate bloodline who was a priestess of Ishtar, easily convincing her to receive Naomi as an ambassador of the divine. The woman never thought to question that the being speaking to her was neither Ishtar nor one of Her emissaries, and Naomi didn’t see the point in disabusing her of the notion. She put the woman to sleep as soon as she’d taken possession of her body. She wouldn’t harm her. She didn’t plan to be here for long.

It took her a few moments to adjust to the new sensations. She felt so much more, physically and mentally, and while part of her despised it, another disturbingly loud part was enjoying it. She managed to keep herself under control and focus on the task at hand. Castiel’s grace called to her like a beacon and she followed it through the city.

Walking through the marketplace was an adventure. The sweat hung uncomfortably on her skin in the heat of the day. The smells assaulted her, some appealing and some revolting, one changing to the other without warning. Naomi clapped a borrowed hand over a borrowed nose and went as fast as she could in the priestess’s long dress and awkward headdress. She saw Castiel’s grace at rest in a dwelling on the opposite end of the square. She was almost halfway there when she heard the voices, stopping her in her tracks.

“If you don’t shut the fuck up right now, I’m going to- ”

“You’ll what? I’m still an angel. I’m more powerful than you, you demon whore- ”

“Yet I outrank you, you spineless, bottom-feeding piece of- ”

“Sheol,” Naomi whispered with her human tongue.

The creature that had just passed her looked like a human woman in a long green dress, right arm and shoulder bared and bedecked in golden bangles that matched the rings in her ears and the loops around her neck. Naomi saw beyond that. She’d never seen a demon before, except in the memories of other angels, but she knew that was what she was looking at. She saw the swirling black mass of the creature’s true form, choking down the human soul who owned the body, but she saw more than that. She saw what remained of her Destroyer. Both Sheol and her companion, a short, shirtless man in a long skirt containing the undamaged grace of Mammon, froze at Naomi’s recognition. They turned to look at her, wary. It was Naomi’s duty to report them immediately. To smite the demon and drag the traitorous angel back to Heaven.

She didn’t.

Unpossessed humans streamed unawares around the three figures in the square. After a long pause, when it became apparent that Naomi would do nothing more than stare, the demon’s mouth curled into a sneer.

“My Pleasant One,” she said, and there was no affection in the words. “I hardly recognized you.”

“Nor I, you,” Naomi said with all the coldness she could muster. “Demonhood has treated you poorly, Sheol.”

“Sheol perished when she separated from the poison of her grace. I go by Abaddon now.”

The man snickered and Sheol- _Abaddon-_ hit him on the back of the head, to no discernible effect. Naomi turned her attention to him.

“And you, Mammon? Have you changed your name as well?”

He leered at her bawdily. She curled her lip in distaste.

“You can call me whatever you want, love.”

“Disgusting,” Abaddon opined dramatically.

“Oh, you liked it last night.”

 _“Disgusting,”_ Abaddon repeated.

Naomi couldn’t tell whether what Mammon was implying was true or not. Abaddon’s protestations were a bit too forceful in her opinion. The idea of the two of them together, especially in that carnal, human way, bothered her more than she cared to admit. Mammon must have seen it on her vessel’s face, because he smirked at Naomi knowingly. She rolled her eyes away from him, back to Abaddon. The name still felt wrong in her mind.

“Leave us.”

Abaddon gave the command to Mammon without looking at him. He opened his mouth in a noise of protest, but shut it immediately when she glared at him. She was beloved of the Lightbringer and he was not. His greater angelic power meant nothing compared to her authority. Naomi saw colossal wings unfurl from his vessel’s back and carry him away. None of the human crowd appeared to notice his disappearance.

“Alone at last.”

Abaddon’s demeanor shifted minutely. Arrogance and spite still emanated from her, but Naomi dared to hope that she saw fondness seep its way into the demon’s gaze. Her vessel’s heart fluttered erratically and she clutched at her chest instinctively.

“Do I make your heart race, angel?”

Abaddon took a graceful step closer. Naomi held her ground, placing her hand down by her side. Their vessels were of near-identical height, eye-level with each other.

“Do I give you naughty thoughts?” Abaddon purred. Some of her smoky essence escaped from her vessel’s lips before she sucked it back down. Pure black, but different from Leviathan ooze. Like liquid silk. Naomi found herself licking her vessel’s lips in response.

Yes. Yes, the demon was giving her impure thoughts. She felt arousal spike through her vessel’s skin. Hot and wet between her legs. The only comparison she could make was when she had raced through the stars with Sheol, the universe as their playground. It was similar, yet so different. So strange, but so inviting-

No. This was not her body. These were not her feelings. Any feelings she might have harbored for Sheol, any love she’d had, should have died when Sheol became Abaddon. Her arousal vanished and Naomi straightened her vessel’s shoulders. She reached a flat hand toward Abaddon’s forehead, ready to do her job. What she should have done the moment she saw the demon.

Abaddon snarled, ducking from her impending death, but Naomi saw a flash of hurt disappointment amidst the fear and anger in her vessel’s eyes. It was enough to give her pause. Enough to allow Abaddon to escape.

“You never were any fun,” the demon glowered. Battered wings of dark vapor spread from her back and she was gone. Naomi’s heart began to slow.

She had not behaved properly, but no one would ever have to know. She made her way across the square, faltering footsteps quickly turning to purposeful strides. Sheol- _Abaddon-_ her Destroyer was alive. That should not make her glad. It shouldn’t, but it did.

She wanted to bring Sheol home. It was impossible, but the desire burned in her heart, greater than the lust that had burned in her vessel’s belly. She could fix almost anything, why not a demon? Why not Sheol? She could fix this-

Except, of course, she _couldn’t_ fix everything, she remembered as she stood before the door Castiel’s grace glowed behind. A reminder of her failure. Anger sparked, brighter than love or lust. The door blew down before her. Castiel was waiting for her, his angel blade in hand. She spoke to him in her true voice.

_< My name is Naomi. You are coming home.>_

The human man who had caught Castiel’s fancy this time screamed, clapping his hands over his bleeding ears and falling to his knees. Castiel’s face twisted toward the human in concerned anguish, but he was immobilized by Naomi’s will. She reached inside Castiel’s vessel and pulled the angel from the meat. She noted that there was no human soul inside the vessel. She wondered how the rebellious seraph had managed that as she vacated her own occupied vessel, dragging the struggling Castiel after her. Her mission was accomplished, and she had no need or desire to keep the woman around. It didn’t occur to her to give a second thought to the scene they’d left behind.

*

Naomi became more aware of the human perception of time after taking a vessel, though just once for such a short while. Even so, she was still an immortal being and the years passed quickly while she focused on her mission in Heaven, only learning of Earth through the thoughts and memories of the angels she debriefed. Nations rose and fell, humans lived and died. Michael grew stricter and more distant. Raphael’s melancholy rose. Castiel continued to prove himself incorrigible, and Naomi’s irritation with him swelled to borderline hatred.

At the beginning of the Common Era, Michael declared a moratorium on angelic activity on Earth. Only a few would be allowed, on an as-needed basis. The angels were to focus on training in Heaven for the Apocalypse.

 _< We are fast approaching the End of Days,>_ Michael announced from the dais in the Great Hall where he and Raphael stood. The first time the Host had all been gathered there since the rebellion.

_< I have spoken with our Father, and he has decreed that in two short millennia, my sword will be forged in human flesh and I will take it to command the armies of Heaven on Earth. We will eradicate every last demon, send the Mother’s children to Purgatory, and bring about a Paradise for angels and humans that will last forever.>_

Naomi stood with Zachariah at the base of the dais and knew that they were being lied to. She wondered if it was all lies, or if any of Michael’s words were truth. The Host was deceived, of course they were deceived, and part of that was her doing. Her instrument, imbued with Michael’s orders given through the pompous cherub beside her. Which meant Zachariah knew this was a lie, too.

The rest of the Host cheered in mostly human voices, envesselled as so many of them were. It segued Michael into his next decree, also claimed to be directly from God, that all vessels were to be returned to Earth. Some angels gave up their vessels easily, but Naomi had to pry several from the bodies they’d grown accustomed to. She spoke to the human souls that remained, giving them a choice between returning to a human world from which they’d been absent for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years, or else accepting immediate eternal rest in their own private heavens. Almost all of them chose to stay in Heaven.

Naomi changed her void space for the first time since it had been given to her. It was still bright and white, but she gave it more of a physical presence. It grounded her, now that she had to retrain herself to working on unvesselled angels. It was a simple space, based on Greek architecture. A wide, open room of white marble floors, pillars, and ceiling. Accented by furniture in the form of a few marble benches arranged in the center. She was proud of her design. Acceptably proud.

Bartholomew copied her almost exactly, the only difference was in his bench arrangement. Naomi was annoyed, but tried not to begrudge him too much. He was having an especially difficult time working on his unvesselled brethren, she’d let him have this. Naomi took comfort from the fact she was still the best at her mission.

*

 _< I know God isn’t dead,>_ Raphael told her at their next session. _< I’ve known for a long while, though I let you believe otherwise. I know our Father abandoned us.>_

 _< He **could** be dead, >_ Naomi didn’t bother to deny Raphael’s statement. She hadn’t thought about her Father’s whereabouts in such a long time. Maybe He really was dead.

 _< No,>_ Raphael was adamant. _< If He were dead, we would know it. It would shake creation to its foundations. We would feel it.>_

 _< You’re probably right,>_ Naomi lied convincingly.

 _< Besides, He can’t be dead. It’s not possible,>_ Raphael’s tone turned conspiratorial. _< He made it so only Death can kill Him, and Death won’t be released until the End of Times.>_

Naomi found that argument more persuasive.

_< Do you wish to end our sessions, then?>_

As she asked, she realized that she would miss the time spent with Raphael should they forgo her help. Perhaps she loved them, as she’d loved Sheol and still loved Abaddon in spite of herself. It had never occurred to her, all the different kinds of love there could be. Her love for Raphael was so different from her love for Abaddon, but it was love nonetheless. Even as the revelation came to Naomi, she watched the archangel’s wavelengths shrink in surrender, and she sorrowed to know that they weren’t coming back.

_< I don’t believe the lies are beneficial to me anymore. They are pleasing while I am with you, but I grow sadder, wearier, each time I leave you. That, in turn, makes me crave the lies again and so I return. It has become a vicious cycle. That was not the intent.>_

_< No, it wasn’t.>_

She was momentarily saddened by the harm she’d caused her favorite archangel. Then she became angry with herself for not seeing it before. She’d failed again. Jophiel, Sheol, Castiel, now Raphael-

But why should she include Sheol in that list? She hadn’t failed Sheol, had never even had a chance to try and fix her Destroyer’s faulty ways. That was the crux of the problem. Sheol had chosen, and she’d made the wrong choice. Choice was the enemy.

 _You make choices all the time,_ she reminded herself sternly. _You’ve made wrong choices._ True enough, but she was permitted to choose. For whatever reason, in their Father’s plan Naomi had been granted choice.

But she didn’t want it. She yearned for the privilege of blind obedience. Could she use her instrument on herself, she wondered?

_Blasphemy!_

For the first time in her long existence, she considered the option of termination. No longer an option, really. Heaven needed her. Her function was to ensure that termination was the absolute last resort for those that threatened others. It would be yet another blasphemy if she were to terminate herself.

She would never do that. And, if Naomi were to choose anyone to terminate her, it would be her beautiful Destroyer.

Her grace churned in agitation until she felt Raphael’s healing touch. It was cool and calming. She relaxed under it as they spoke a quiet confession.

_< Sometimes I wish to be one of the common angels in the Host. I wish this burden was not mine to bear.>_

She wondered if they’d read her thoughts.

 _< It is not for us to question the roles we have been assigned,>_ she told them kindly, hating the words she knew she had to say as much to herself as to them. _< Only through obedience can we truly be free.>_

 _< Oh, Naomi,>_ Raphael sighed, so vulnerable for all the awesome power they possessed. _< My strange angel. Will you lie to me one more time?>_

_< Of course, Raphael.>_

She agreed wholeheartedly, knowing it was the wrong choice to make. Selfishly desiring to merge her grace with theirs for the last time. It was as beautiful as it had ever been, despite the many days she’d taken it for granted. Raphael soaked up her pretty lies voraciously, but their fleeting bliss made way for crushing despair before they’d even left her presence. They didn’t say goodbye. For a long while, Naomi stared at the bench Raphael had reclined upon. She felt the love she’d just discovered wither and die. A piece of her turned hard and ugly. It joined the other hard, ugly pieces she’d been cultivating since she’d merged her grace with the doomed Jophiel. The pieces she’d refused to admit were there. She had to acknowledge them now.

She only ever saw Raphael from a distance after that, and she never spoke with them again.

*

It was the year 1863 CE that Naomi committed one of the blasphemies she’d contemplated during her last session with Raphael. It was the day she learned of Abaddon’s death.

Her Destroyer had been part of a group known as the Knights of Hell. Particularly vicious demons under the command of Father-of-Murder Cain himself. Naomi had surreptitiously kept tabs on her former partner through the years. Long stretches of time would pass with no news, then a bloody spree would come to her attention and she would recognize Abaddon’s work. It should bother her, how Abaddon ran amok in their Father’s creation, brutally murdering His favorite creatures and laughing in His face as she did. It should, and sometimes it did, but it also sometimes filled her with spiteful glee. A slap in the face of her neglectful Father, experienced vicariously through one she loved.

Naomi didn’t know the exact details of Abaddon’s demise. Just that Cain had a change of heart and turned on his Knights, slaughtering them all. Naomi was in the middle of a correction, some minor cupid, when Ion brought her the news. She didn’t even realize what she was doing until it was too late. The cupid didn’t even remember his name, could barely string two sentences together.

 _< Sol-voch-tay,>_ the cupid repeated stupidly. _< Sol-voch-tay.>_

 _< Shut up!>_ Naomi screamed in panic and belayed grief, scrambling to fix the damage she’d wrought on the poor angel she’d been responsible for. _< Just shut up!>_

She could feel Ion’s sullen judgement boring into her and she screamed at him to leave. He obeyed instantly. The pressure she felt lessened with Ion’s departure and she managed to reprogram the cupid successfully. As soon as he’d left, she turned her instrument on herself.

She wanted to bore out every last bit of her love, the love that was telling her to grieve when she didn’t want to- shouldn’t want to. With the thought she felt her silver tool begin to spin. It sank into her grace with an unsettling whirring noise. She couldn’t see what she was doing, and it hurt. It always hurt the angels now, no matter what, even if they didn’t show it. It didn’t matter whether they wanted it to hurt or not.

Because Naomi wanted it to hurt. She especially wanted it to hurt now.

 _< Sadist!>_ she shrieked at herself above the whir of her drill. _< Blasphemer!>_

She hurt everywhere, and it was sweet exaltation. She screamed louder, both with pain, and for the joy of it. The marble floors cracked, benches upended, pillars toppled.

_< This wasn’t your purpose! This wasn’t the mission!>_

But what _was_ the mission? She couldn’t remember, and she didn’t care at the moment.

When she had finished, Naomi knew she hadn’t fixed anything. She’d barely scratched the surface. She could feel those hard, ugly pieces inside of her still. There seemed to be more now. It was her punishment for her blasphemy. Proof that God was still out there, angry with her.

 _< Well, fuck you, too,>_ she sniped at her absent Father. _< If you cared so much, you’d come back to us.>_

Could angels be damned? Without the ordeal of tearing out their grace and being human, which she’d never do? She wasn’t sure, but if angels could be damned she’d be a worthy contender. She’d cursed God. She’d disobeyed, tried to change God’s plan-

 _< Who cares?>_ she asked recklessly, sealing her fate. _< He took Sheol from me. Twice. He took Raphael from me. Who cares?>_

Her rage began to cool, fading with the pain from her failed attempt at correcting herself. She needed to pull herself together. She was being ridiculous. Her marble chamber repaired itself around her and she healed the self-inflicted damage to her grace. She wasn’t damned. She was almost positive angels couldn’t be. Even if they could, her Father wasn’t here anymore. He didn’t care. He didn’t care.

Order was her mission. Following Michael’s orders, bringing about his interpretation of God’s will, that was her mission. She would do that. She would do that, or she’d be lost. She retrieved the drill she’d flung in her tantrum and created a marble pedestal for it to rest on when she wasn’t using it. She admired it briefly, caressing it with her grace. The parts of her grace that composed it had been so long severed from her that she could no longer feel them. She looked at her high ceiling, imbued with newfound purpose.

 _< Goodbye, my Destroyer,>_ she said softly into the camouflaged void.

*

For the next hundred years, Naomi eagerly awaited the Apocalypse and the glorious paradise Raphael had promised. Abaddon was gone, so it didn’t matter that the rest of the demons had to die to achieve it.

_< It’s a lie, you know.>_

Anael’s wavelengths were chained to one of the marble benches. Naomi had made restraints out of her own grace, an invention she’d come up with just after Abaddon’s death. They made her job so much easier, as did her drill apparatus. She’d worked on it since the first time she’d used it on herself, and it had evolved into the perfect tool for her job. She grew to love it. It was an extension of herself, after all, even if she could no longer feel it.

Anael had been making trouble in her garrison lately, and Naomi was trying to get to the root of her unrest. The rest of her garrison had been doing so well, too. Even Castiel. A couple thousand years away from those humans he couldn’t resist had done him a world of good. Naomi had been trying to reason with Anael as she drilled, telling her about the paradise awaiting the obedient Host after the End of Times. Anael was one of Naomi’s favorite angels to correct. No matter how deep she went, Anael never screamed.

_< What’s a lie, dear?>_

_< Paradise isn’t for angels. Only for humans.>_

Naomi honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if that were true. She didn’t believe that Anael would have access to that information, however.

_< How do you know?>_

_< I heard Michael and Zachariah. They were certain that they would be granted favors because of their high status, but the rest of us cannon fodder wouldn’t. Not me, and probably not you. Although- who are you, again?>_

_< It’s not important.>_

Naomi processed Anael’s information. She believed the commander’s story, but she wondered if she would rank in the supposed paradise to come. She doubted it. Michael and Raphael, maybe. She wondered if Raphael would vouch for her- But that wasn’t the point, was it? All they’d worked for, all _she’d_ worked for, all a lie. All for nothing.

_< They’re going to release Lucifer. Make us think they don’t want it to happen, let us fight and die to prevent it, but do it anyway. And then they were talking about Castiel.>_

_< What about Castiel?>_ Naomi inquired sharply, making Anael flinch.

_< They- they found a mark on Castiel. Found it ages ago. Said it makes him special, chosen. Chosen to suffer the most. I think they were afraid of him.>_

Naomi had never seen the mark Anael was referring to. She made a note to search Castiel’s grace thoroughly during his next checkup.

 _< I want paradise,>_ Anael said fiercely over the noise of the drill. _< I want to be allowed to feel everything. I want to be human.>_

_< No, you don’t.>_

Naomi went about fixing Anael. She was certain she’d succeeded.

*

 _< You’re slipping, Naomi,>_ Zachariah chided.

Naomi had been wrong in her assessment of Anael’s correction. The commander had left Naomi’s office after her session, but she hadn’t returned to her post. She hadn’t been seen since. Theories abounded: Anael had run away, like Gabriel and Metatron before her. Anael had been captured or killed by demons. Anael had ripped out her grace and fallen like the followers of Lucifer.

Naomi reported what Anael had said when Zachariah prompted. She wanted to see Zachariah’s reaction.

_< Thank you, that gives us a good idea as to what became of our little fallen angel. We’ll keep a lookout for her, terminate her immediately if she’s found. That kind of treason cannot be tolerated.>_

_< And- the rest of what she said?>_ Naomi asked carefully.

 _< Oh, she’s not wrong,>_ Zachariah said brightly, faces braying with laughter at Naomi’s confusion. _< Death and destruction for many in order to bring paradise to a few. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be included on the A-List. As long as you stop screwing things up, that is.>_

_< And Lucifer? This mark on Castiel?>_

_< All true. Hell if I know or care. Not my problem. Not yours either, really. Not that you could stop it if you wanted to. Everything’s set in motion. Michael’s sword has been out of diapers for a few years now, being shaped alongside Lucifer’s vessel to fulfill their destinies. It’s the end of the world, baby. Get on board or get out of the way.>_

_< Yes, sir,>_ Naomi had to think. She needed Zachariah to leave.

_< What does that mean? You on board or not?>_

_< I am. Sir.>_

He left. She wanted to scream, but she contained it. She’d bide her time for now, see how things played out.

*

She found the mark on Castiel. A strange little helix symbol that blended in with his grace. She would never have noticed it if she hadn’t been looking for it. Even so it took her a long time, Castiel’s screams fading to ragged moans, then whimpers, then blessed silence, but she found it.

Naomi let Jehoel tend to the aftermath of her examination while she brooded over what the symbol meant.

*

As the Apocalypse drew nigh, Naomi continued to bide her time.

Castiel rescued Dean Winchester, Michael’s sword and vessel, from Hell, and Naomi wondered if that was what the mark had signified. Angels were allowed on Earth once more, taking vessels, keeping them in Heaven, making Naomi’s work easier again. Lilith made her first appearance on Earth in several thousand years. Seals broke. Angels died in vain.

Still she waited.

Uriel and Castiel discovered the location of Anael’s human incarnation, but she managed to regain her grace with the help of a seemingly-friendly demon and Michael and Lucifer’s vessels. Soon after, Uriel unequivocally sided with the Lightbringer, killing seven angels from that garrison that had been such a thorn in Naomi’s side. The last of them was poor Leah. Anael, now Anna, made Uriel the eighth and final casualty when she prevented him from killing Castiel. Naomi had mixed feelings about that. She didn’t have time to reflect much on it, though, what with Zachariah giving her grief for not seeing Uriel’s true colors. Naomi ignored the tongue lashing. She had other matters on her mind.

She was still waiting when she realized she didn’t know what she was waiting for. She still hadn’t picked a side. She just didn’t care. Her purpose had been to keep things together for so long, and now they were well and truly falling to pieces around her ears. All she could do was pick up all the pieces she could carry and desperately try to put them back together.

There was no order. There was no truth. There was no God, or there might as well not have been.

Castiel, true to form, developed feelings for Michael’s vessel. Relatively harmless, considering the bigger picture, but a flustered Zachariah, newly contained in the body of a jowly, middle-aged man in a suit, sent Naomi to retrieve the seraph once again.

"He’s already helped to almost undo the work of a prophet, and now he’s about to tell Michael’s sword everything! Get your ass down there and stop him!"

She sent Esper and Ion ahead, since they already had vessels, while she took her second vessel. The woman had been in a fatal car accident, her body maimed and broken, and she was dying in agony while the doctors could do nothing but push more and more morphine into her IV. Naomi offered her immediate respite from the pain, as well as a guaranteed place in Heaven. The woman gladly accepted. Naomi sent her soul up to Heaven, cleaned her new vessel of blood, straightened her bones and tendons, then clothed herself in the uniform business attire Michael had been encouraging the angels to maintain when they took vessels. The pantsuit she created was black at first, but that reminded her horribly of Zachariah so she changed it to grey. Being in a vessel devoid of a human soul was more palatable, and Naomi decided to keep it once she’d dealt with Castiel on Earth. She absorbed the residual memories inside the woman’s brain, learned of human history and vernacular. Some of it was almost interesting, but she had other matters to attend to besides sorting out the quirks of humanity. That sort of thing should be beneath her.

She went to the warehouse where Castiel, Esper, and Ion were engaged in a no-holds-barred angel brawl. Castiel had a slight advantage in that he had no orders that forbade him from killing the other two, but Naomi gave him the trigger phrase and took him out of his vessel before he could do any real damage to her angels. She brought him back to her white room and secured him to the bench. She couldn’t wipe his memories completely this time, since Zachariah insisted that he remember Dean Winchester. Apparently Castiel was the only angel, aside from Anael, that Dean had established a rapport with, and they needed that to better manipulate Dean. This proved frustrating for Naomi. She couldn’t erase the memories and feelings, she could only dull them. But Castiel knew that something wasn’t right. He kept picking at her blocks, sending the whole thing crashing down, forcing her to start all over again.

_< Leave it alone, Castiel! You’re only hurting yourself.>_

_< No! Where am I? Who are you? What are you doing to me?>_

_< I’m trying to help you, let me help you.>_

_< No! Stop!>_

On and on. Naomi had blocked Castiel’s neurons for the fifth time, when his grace shivered and he stopped fighting her. He was intently focused on something, listening. He was feeling something, but it had nothing to do with Dean Winchester. Naomi supposed it was progress.

_< Castiel?>_

_< Yes,>_ Castiel said dully. _< You were right. I was only hurting myself, I see that now. I’m better now. I’ve learned my lesson.>_

His thoughts were distorted, but Naomi could pick out a few cogent feelings. The names _Jimmy, Claire, Amelia_ flashed in and out of focus. More, unknown humans. Naomi was suspicious.

_< Where is your loyalty Castiel?>_

_< To Heaven.>_

_< What about the humans?>_

_< Not to them. To Heaven.>_

_< And, Dean Winchester?>_

_< Definitely not him. To Heaven. Only Heaven.>_

Naomi marveled to see that the blocks were still in place. She let Castiel go back to Earth.

It was at least two days before Castiel broke again, but not in time to stop Sam Winchester from freeing Lucifer. He’d also managed to turn Anael back over to Heaven, so Naomi didn’t consider it a total loss. Raphael obliterating the troublesome seraph in defense of the prophet Chuck was a bonus. Not that she was glad Lucifer was out, she would always be embittered toward him over Abaddon, but it took the choice out of her hands. The Apocalypse was underway. She’d soon find out whether or not there was a place in paradise for her.

*

In the next few months, Naomi was distracted by her re-education of Anael. She was only slightly perturbed to hear of Castiel’s miraculous revival, and she was only mildly distressed when Raphael became the second archangel to disappear without a trace. Naomi threw herself into her work with Anael. Made good progress, too. So it annoyed her to no end when the rebellious angel escaped yet again. Anael’s reprogramming was incomplete, and in her confusion she tried to stop the Apocalypse herself by killing Sam Winchester. At least it wasn’t Naomi’s fault this time. Anael had been in the prison when she got loose, so this one was on Thaddeus. Unfortunately, Michael stopped Anael by killing her. Utterly destroyed her, without the finesse of Sheol. All of Naomi’s work, for naught. She shrugged it off, continued to perform her function, and waited for the world to end.

But the Apocalypse didn’t pan out. The Winchesters thwarted it. One by refusing to accept his destiny, the other by allowing Lucifer to possess him, then wresting control from the Lightbringer and throwing not just the two of them but Michael as well into the cage and slamming the door behind them. Naomi almost felt satisfaction from that, even at the expense of Michael. It wasn’t like she’d seen him in hundreds of years, only gotten his orders through Zachariah. One of the Winchesters had killed that petty cherub, too.

It would be wrong of her to feel spiteful glee about it. So very wrong-

She sobered quickly when she heard the confusion among what remained of the Host. They had no leader, and they floundered without direction. Naomi floundered along with them, but Castiel’s swift return, followed by Raphael’s soon after, put an end to their confusion.

Castiel’s homecoming proved an uncomfortable reminder to Naomi of her shortcomings. The strange seraph had played an integral role in helping the Winchesters defy Heaven’s plan, and she couldn’t help but blame herself for failing to re-educate him adequately before allowing him back in the game. Castiel had died in his confrontation with Lucifer, but inexplicably managed to pull off a second resurrection. He returned to Heaven with more power than he’d ever had before, spouting inanities about being _the new sheriff in town_ and talking about establishing a new order of angelic free will. Obviously he’d spent far too much time around the humans. Naomi watched him gather followers, and she was glad of her anonymity. She wiped all knowledge of herself from the memories of her five angels and sent them to gather information among the Host, reporting back to her periodically. She experimented with their minds, and figured out how to exert direct contact and control with them over great distances. She could keep their consciousnesses with her, controlling their grace-infused vessels out in the field. Her discoveries imbued her with newfound purpose. That joy of creation, purpose she hadn’t really felt since- since the beginning of things.

She was saddened that she had no one to share it with.

When Raphael came back, they came back different. Harder. Angrier. Naomi saw it, even shrouded and from a distance as she was. Raphael began gathering followers around themself, their factions clashing with Castiel’s factions. Most of the angels picked a side between the two, although there were plenty who didn’t choose. A few simply fled Heaven. Naomi watched it all. She had ideas about what was going on, of course, but she had no direct orders to interfere so she didn’t. Raphael spoke with her through an intermediary, like Michael had done, but Naomi found Raphael’s angel Azrael far more pleasant than Zachariah. Raphael did not want her to maintain or correct any of the Host throughout the power struggle. They wanted to see who was loyal to them, to Heaven, to God Himself, without any prodding on Naomi’s part.

“That way, Raphael can punish the rebels, traitors, and deserters with no compunction after their inevitable victory,” Azrael informed her.

Naomi was almost afraid. But only Raphael knew of her, and they were likely to prevail in this conflict. Castiel had power, but he was no archangel, and their Father had left the command in the hands of the archangels. She would wait, as she had been waiting for centuries. The Apocalypse had merely been delayed, that was all. Raphael would set everything back on course.

Still, she never swore fealty to Raphael, and Azrael never asked. It was just assumed the remaining confidant to the archangels, the arbiter of order, would take Raphael’s side. Naomi did nothing to dissuade the opinion. She gave Azrael a mind wipe and a minor conditioning before sending her back to Raphael.

She waited. Angels fought and died. Castiel grew in power. She wondered what she would do if Castiel did win. He would have no use for her in his new order, and he didn’t even know of her existence. Would she have to hide in her white room for the rest of eternity? What purpose could she glean from that? She’d been desperately grasping for a mission for such a long time-

_I am now bored always, Pleasant One. I am so bored._

Sheol’s words came to her. Bored. Wrong. Blasphemous.

True.

She made herself an angel blade. For what, herself or Castiel’s forces, she wasn’t quite sure. She held it in her white room and waited.

She redecorated her space. She was glad there was no Bartholomew to mimic her this time. She chose a design similar to her limited knowledge of human executive offices. Her vessel was still dressed in human business attire, most of the angels were, even after Michael’s imprisonment, so she made her space to match. It was simple, austere, and so bright. The floor became white tile. Benches became plush white chairs. The marble pedestal became a desk with a single lamp and something called a Newton’s Cradle that she would manipulate and watch when the boredom threatened to consume her. The point of entry was a large glass door. Huge windows surrounded her, obscuring the void beyond them.

Naomi waited some more, the silver balls of her human toy clicking back and forth in the background.

Castiel won, teaming up with the demon Crowley who Naomi discovered had once been the angel Mammon, reborn so late in human history as to be the laughingstock of the First Fallen, yet possibly the last one remaining. Castiel consumed the souls of Purgatory, after his seemingly unkillable pet Winchesters destroyed the Mother, and obliterated Raphael from existence before declaring himself their new Father.

Naomi might have grieved had she not been experiencing unadulterated terror for the first time in her long life. She heard the pseudo-God slay thousands of the Host. She heard His threats and proclamations, as she knew all the angels were hearing it. He’d thrown away the concept of free will as soon as it had inconvenienced Him. He killed Raphael’s supporters as well as those who had not chosen a side while she huddled under the desk in her office with Bartholomew, their vessel’s feet entangled in the small space. She’d gathered her five to her, as well, afraid that the God could dig inside their minds and find knowledge of her existence. Esper paced maddeningly by the windows while Jehoel and Nathaniel held each other, trembling. Ion sat in a white chair and stared blankly at the far wall. The screams of their siblings faded eventually, but still they waited. Naomi thought she might wait forever.

Ion was the first to leave. He said nothing, vessel’s face as blank as it had been the entire ordeal, just stood and left despite Naomi’s cry not to. She should have ordered him back, but she was curious despite her better judgment. If Ion wanted to volunteer as their sacrificial lamb- or, more like penguin in this instance- so be it. Ion came back quickly, pale and shaken, telling them the coast was clear. The God had disappeared.

“He might come back,” Naomi warned. They could all feel Him, lurking. Ready to make a new commandment or smite someone else.

“Then he comes back,” Ion shrugged before exiting the space again. The other four followed him. After some consideration, Naomi went, too.

Bodies were strewn everywhere. In the Great Hall. In the Garden. In individual heavens where angels had run to hide. The most were concentrated in the heaven of a drowned man named Alvin Shea, a beautiful green park and blue sky marred by the corpses of vessels and the charred ash of angel’s wings. Naomi found that one on her own, losing the rest of her five to shock and grief along the way. She found Azrael in the center of the slaughter. It looked like she had tried to fight.

This had been vicious. This had been unnecessarily nasty. There was correction, and then there was _this-_

Color flashed in the periphery of her awareness and Naomi whirled with a cry, drawing her sword. A kite in bright primary colors flew through the sky connected by a string to the hand of Alvin Shea. The man was unaware of what had been made of his heaven. The human soul couldn’t perceive it. Naomi was strangely glad for that. A small comfort among all the suffering around her.

Suddenly, she couldn’t feel the God anymore. She reached out recklessly through her angelic connection, trying to find Him, knowing that might mean her undoing, but she couldn’t find Him. How could that be? Had He hidden Himself from the other angels? Had he followed in their first Father’s footsteps and left them so soon? Had he finally, permanently, terminated?

Doubtful. So doubtful, especially considering how much she wanted Him- him?- to be dead. But why couldn’t she feel Him?

In a daze, she began to clean up the mess before her, slowly accepting the fact that the second God’s reign of terror had ended so quickly. She couldn’t scream or grieve like she could hear some of the other survivors beginning to. She felt that hard ugliness expand inside her. She allowed it. If He was gone, and she was starting to believe that He was, that made her the highest-ranking angel left. She would be expected to lead, and she didn’t want to. She didn’t, she didn’t-

She had to. It was her duty. Her new purpose. She’d wanted one, after all. That thought made her laugh bitterly.

She scoured Alvin Shea’s heaven and she went to find the remainder of the Host. So few left. Less than a thousand, not counting the runaways not present. Many she recognized from Castiel’s troublesome garrison. They were afraid, they had questions. They didn’t know who she was. She didn’t want to explain.

“My name is Naomi.”

She crooned through her vessel’s tiny vocal folds. The Host snapped to attention. They were afraid, but they were under her control now. She was responsible for them. She didn’t have the power to fulfill their Father’s ultimate plans, but she had enough to take care of the children He’d abandoned. To clean up the mess. To fix Heaven. Not just from Castiel’s ill-fated coup, but from eons of Godless meandering. She felt a thrill of excitement at that prospect. She could do it her own way. Normally a bad, blasphemous notion, but not under the circumstances. She had been cursed with knowledge and choice. It was her responsibility.

“Everything is going to be alright,” she lied pleasantly. “The false God is gone and we will rebuild. Won’t that be nice?”

They agreed automatically, and she was satisfied, but also sad because she was still alone.

*

Castiel was still alive. The Host began to feel his presence again, weak and depowered, but still there. Worse, he had released the Leviathan on Earth before his omnipotence had drained from him. Naomi put a moratorium on Earthly travel for the Host until she could figure out a way to manage this new crisis. Leviathan were too powerful and the angels were too few to fight them. Perhaps they’d have to fortify the Heavenly Gates and give up Earth as a lost cause. She pondered this as she and the remaining angels cleaned up Castiel’s mess. The others mourned for the dead, and she allowed them because it was important, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. Grief was not something she could permit herself. She was a leader now.

She dragged a weakened Castiel back to Heaven herself, overcoming her fear of him when she saw his flickering grace languishing at the bottom of a river. His vessel had been destroyed, but she rebuilt it for him. It was easier to work on vesselled angels, and she wanted this to be as simple as possible. Naomi converted one of the plush white chairs into a gurney capable of holding the seraph and his vessel down while she worked on him. She wasn’t sure what her reasons for digging into Castiel’s mind were, and that scared her. Did she really think she could fix him, when he’d proven himself so thoroughly uncorrectable in the past, or was this simply revenge? His screams were less annoying than they were satisfying-

She thought of Raphael. Azrael’s twisted corpse. All the other bodies. Her failures. She dug deeper and her lips twisted when Castiel shrieked.

 _Do not go down this path,_ she warned herself. She didn’t listen. Her drill whirred.

She learned all about Castiel’s time on Earth. How he’d almost become human in a new way, not ripping out his grace but letting it drain away slowly. She learned of Gabriel’s death at Lucifer’s hand. She learned of Crowley, that cowardly former angel who had found himself the most powerful demon left in Hell. Much like her situation, she realized, and bristled at the comparison. She learned of the Winchesters, beyond what she knew of them as her lost brother’s vessels. They were fascinating humans in their own right. Castiel felt so strongly for them, stronger than he’d felt for his own siblings. His fondness for Sam Winchester was intense and enduring. His love for Dean Winchester was the most she’d felt concerning his previous human infatuations. She began to resent the Winchesters for it.

That helix mark was still there. Like a crack marring his grace. Unfixable. It made her so angry.

She was remembering her last session with Raphael when she realized she’d killed him. The shell of his vessel lay bleeding and unmoving in her chair. Black wing marks stretched over her pristine floors, some of the feather imprints staining her jacket and pants. She cleaned up the mess immediately and tamped down her guilt and grief. This was for the best. She probably should have asked for permission to do it ages ago. And now she didn’t need to ask permission for anything.

This was not retribution. It was correction. Justice. She chanted it to herself like a mantra.

It didn’t take. Castiel returned, essence reincorporating before her eyes in her office. Sitting confused in the unconverted visitor’s chair. Naomi’s theories about that mark began to solidify. She cursed their Father again. Castiel was a threat that could not be destroyed. She would have to find a way to control and contain him.

She wondered if her Destroyer could have terminated Castiel, mark or not. Her Destroyer had been so good at it.

She wiped Castiel’s mind of all knowledge of Heaven, remade his vessel a second time, and sent him back to Earth. She gave him an escort, the angel Yachne. They would pose as a human woman and report back to Naomi periodically, both on Castiel and Leviathan activity.

“How am I to maintain cover?”

“I don’t know,” Naomi bit back her frustration at Yachne’s lack of imagination. “Marry him for all I care.”

Yachne’s lip curled in distaste. At least some angels still had a sense of propriety, Naomi thought, ignoring her qualms about her own hypocrisy in that area. At least she’d never acted on her desires, that had to count for something-

“Of course you don’t have to maintain a physical relationship with him,” Naomi amended. “Pretend. Distract him. Give him a purpose. Now, are you clear on your orders?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Ma’am. She was _ma’am_ now. It felt odd.

Yachne and Castiel became Daphne and Emmanuel Allen and relocated somewhere in Colorado. Naomi settled into her role at the top of Heaven’s hierarchy. Castiel became a so-called faith healer. The Leviathan organized into established human power structures. Hell’s power dwindled as a new pecking order was established with Crowley as King, a near non-threat to the Host. Naomi took care of her remaining siblings, picked up the pieces of Heaven that she could. She still hadn’t decided what to do about the Leviathan menace. She had become so accustomed to biding her time, it came naturally to her now.

“Dean Winchester found us,” Yachne reported, their vessel’s unkempt red hair and wide eyes betraying their panic. “He took Castiel weeks ago and he never came back! I can’t find them!”

“Did Castiel recognize the Winchester?”

“No, but- !”

“Then calm yourself,” Naomi was finding Yachne’s fear contagious. “You will not find the Winchesters, they are somehow warded against angels, so focus your search on Castiel.”

“Did you not hear me? I have, and I can’t find him!”

“You didn’t say that before. Calm yourself, or I will replace you.”

Her pleasant facade was slipping. There was ice on her tongue. It shut Yachne up, although Naomi knew they had much more to say. Failure was great shame to angels.

“I am calm. I will perform my job. I will search for Castiel.”

There was tired resignation in their eyes. In retrospect, Naomi knew she’d completely misinterpreted its origin.

“Good. You will not remember this conversation and you will not remember me until it is time for our next designated meeting. Find Castiel.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Yachne left. They never returned. Naomi sent out a small search party consisting of Esper, Ion, and Jehoel, but the runaway was not recovered.

 _You’re slipping,_ Naomi told herself. She hated how much her inner voice was starting to sound like Zachariah. The angels were tiring of her. She’d allowed some of them too much space. Too much thought. She immediately reset the rest with tighter controls. She took Bartholomew off his basic maintenance duties. She would be the only re-educator from now on.

She sent Hester, Inias, and two other members of Castiel’s former garrison to hunt down the seraph, but that mission was interrupted with the calling of a new prophet. Thunder rumbled, lightning crashed, and Heaven shook with the name _Kevin Tran._ The entire host felt it, but it was Naomi’s responsibility to act on it. There were no more archangels to protect the prophets. She sent the angels under Hester’s command to retrieve and care for the young man. In the aftermath of _that_ disaster, Kevin Tran was kidnapped by Leviathan. Naomi found out what had happened while she was debriefing Inias.

They had found Castiel with the prophet, along with the Winchesters, a demon, and part of the Word of God. Hester had lost control and tried to destroy Castiel in her anger, which Naomi couldn’t really blame her for, but had been killed by the demon instead. Kevin had agreed to go with the angels and Inias had gone ahead to the rendezvous while the other two angels had humored Kevin in taking him to say goodbye to his mother. There, the Leviathan had surprised them, killing the angels and taking the humans. When Inias went to the Tran’s house to see what had happened, he found the carnage. Then, as had been imprinted in his subconscious should a matter regarding the Leviathan come up, he had reported to Naomi’s office.

“Castiel is different now,” Inias intoned in the chair. He was one that required no restraints and he hardly ever made noise during the procedure. “I barely recognized him. His mind is in turmoil and he suffers.”

“Good.”

It slipped out automatically. Inias startled reproachfully.

“It is sad. No one should suffer.”

“After what he did to us?”

“He suffers,” Inias said stubbornly. “And I suffer, too.”

“We’re all suffering,” she snapped, finishing up. Inias left her to her thoughts.

She’d lost three more angels. Good angels. She’d lost the prophet to the Leviathan. Another failure. Another hard, ugly piece. They were all she was now, she feared. She couldn’t help but blame some of that on Castiel. She didn’t care whether that was fair or not. Nothing was fair.

*

Castiel managed to partly clean up his own mess by helping the Winchesters kill the head Leviathan. Without him, the rest of the monsters floundered and were easily rounded up and sent back to Purgatory. Castiel disappeared yet again, along with the oldest Winchester, but Naomi held no hope that it would be a permanent condition. She focused on keeping Heaven ordered. She sent Inias to keep an eye on Kevin Tran after he escaped from the Leviathan, and then Crowley. Hell was gaining power steadily, and Naomi took note of that. Heaven was still superior, but Crowley was shrewd and patient. She might have to deal with him very soon.

 _For what reason?_ Naomi thought in a moment of horrible lucidity. Why was she so intent on restoring Heaven? They would never have the power they’d once had. Their surviving, true leader was locked away forever. Their Father was never coming back, or else He surely would have by now. They were existing, surviving. They had no true purpose. They had lost the mission.

This _was_ the mission, she rebuked herself. Maintaining Heaven. And through setbacks and tragedy, she’d done it. She was succeeding. She had to be. She sent the angel Samandriel to keep an eye on Crowley’s Earthly business.

“Dean Winchester was in Purgatory,” Inias told her in awe one day. “He came back. He says Castiel is still there.”

Kevin Tran had regrouped with the Winchesters, along with the tablet of the Word of God that dealt with demons. Naomi felt detached pity for the human boy. That would probably end badly for him. Still, he was performing his function. Translation. She’d leave him alone for the time being. Castiel was another matter. An angel in Purgatory was not permissible, could even be construed as blasphemy. It wouldn’t do.

She sent Inias and a Reaper to retrieve Castiel. They came back empty-handed.

“He didn’t want to leave,” Inias said, shocked and hurt while the Reaper’s ugly true form glowered behind him. “He said it was his penance.”

Naomi sighed. Typical of Castiel. Remorseful only when it inconvenienced her. She accompanied Inias and the Reaper back to Purgatory, dodged Leviathan and the souls of other distasteful creatures, and spoke her trigger phrase to the defiant seraph where he pined by a river. She didn’t make him come back for debriefing right away. She was curious to see what he would do on his own, now that he was free.

He returned to the Winchesters. Of course. She allowed him to aid in their rescue of Kevin Tran from Crowley before calling him home and replacing her controls. She triggered his power of bilocation so that his shell could remain with the brothers while she spoke with him in her office. She tried to invoke a sense of debt in him; told him that Heaven had rescued him and that many angels had died in the process. The lie sparked guilt in his vessel’s eyes, but she couldn’t help but question whether he truly gave a damn about any lives that weren’t his precious humans. His precious Winchesters. She let Castiel return to them after she’d debriefed him. It would give her better access to Kevin and those tablets should the need arise. She let Inias return to other Heavenly duties.

She waited.

*

Naomi had made Castiel think he had cut himself off from Heaven of his own choice, but that didn’t last long. Castiel soon wanted to return to Heaven. Be allowed to walk the Halls, speak to the other angels. Apologize. The audacity vexed her, after everything he’d done, but she felt pity as well. Angels were beings of fellowship, after all, and she knew what it was like to be alone. She couldn’t let him. He could do nearly anything else he wanted, but not that. She told him no, watched his vessel’s face fall before he asked for alternative instruction.

“What do you want to do?”

She’d meant to ask him what he thought he _should_ do, but the words rearranged on her tongue. Those questions ought to be synonymous as far as an angel was concerned, but with Castiel there was no telling. She wanted to know what his answer would be. She wanted to let him.

She’d been spending far too much time inside Inias’s head, she scoffed at herself.

Castiel wanted to help people. That was harmless, she supposed. She could let him flit around, healing, being that _ministering spirit_ the religious humans spoke of. He’d destroyed so many angels, he might as well pick up the slack from the remaining ones whose purpose had been to care for the humans. He could easily keep tabs on Kevin and the Winchesters at the same time.

Soon after that, Ion alerted her to the fact that Samandriel hadn’t checked in on schedule. She didn’t allow herself to worry, she’d deal with it. There were explanations for tardiness that did not require anxiety-

 _< Naomi,>_ Samandriel’s voice sounded in her head as if she’d summoned him with her thoughts. _<_ _Naomi, Crowley has me. >_

He was calm, but so afraid, and he was her responsibility. The message was cut off so suddenly as to be sinister. Naomi raged at herself. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten the ophan’s appointment. She’d been so distracted. She was slipping. Slipping and slipping. This was not the way it should be. There was too much on her plate, and she was not a leader, didn’t want to be-

 _What do **you** want to do, Naomi?_ Not this, not this, but-

 _What **should** you do, Naomi?_ This, this, of course, this-

She quelled her panic. She’d have to deal with this. She summoned Castiel to her. He and the Winchesters could handle this, might as well make themselves useful after all the time and resources Heaven had wasted on them. Castiel came instantly, and she couldn’t take time to feel pride that his re-education was taking so well. She gave him his orders, let him draw some conclusions, and made sure he thought the mission was his idea. She watched him closely, watched him play matchmaker with the feuding Winchesters before taking them to the warehouse. Once the humans had disabled the angel warding she followed Castiel’s thoughts inside. She could hear Samandriel screaming, as loud as he’d ever screamed for her. Perhaps louder. She seethed. Crowley would pay for this.

Samandriel’s screams were bothering Castiel, too. She felt some of his blocks slipping. _Hurry, hurry, hurry,_ she urged, but that seemed to make it worse. The seraph huddled in a corner, utterly afraid. This wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t-

She remembered huddling under the desk in her office while Castiel decimated her home. _Let him cower. Let him know what it feels like._ Spiteful glee thrummed inside her against her will.

The combined distress of Samandriel, Castiel, and Naomi was affecting the Winchesters as well. Both humans were hurling themselves at the industrial door separating them from Samandriel, bruising blows of skin against metal. They were strong, for humans, and the door gave way eventually. The coward Crowley fled and the only remaining demon was nobody important. He was easily dealt with by the Winchesters. Naomi watched Castiel remove the torturous device from the skull of Samandriel’s vessel. The young man who owned it, Alfie-something, was awake and continued to scream inside his head. He reminded Naomi of the Egyptian boy who had housed Castiel those thousands of years back. Naomi made Castiel put the boy to sleep so she wouldn’t have to hear his screams. Then Castiel took Samandriel outside before she could order them both home.

Outside the warehouse, beside the dark metal contraption that was the Winchester’s trademark car, Naomi realized she had no hold over Samandriel anymore. She reached out to him and felt nothing. He’d been completely reset. Broken. She might be able to repair him, but it would take quite some time. She felt another surge of rage at Crowley.

“I told Crowley things,” Samandriel was speaking frantically to Castiel and Naomi felt a nagging unease growing inside her. “Things he shouldn't have known. He got to our coding, our secrets- secrets I didn't even know we had!”

She had ordered Castiel to accompany Samandriel to her office, but Samandriel wouldn’t go. The inability to obey was making him anxious, even as Samandriel’s information was relayed. She didn’t know if she could salvage the situation. When Samandriel told Castiel her name, of her existence, she knew he had to be terminated. It was unfortunate, but she would lose both of them if she didn’t end this now.

“They’re controlling us, Castiel!”

She bilocated the seraph instantaneously. His confusion undulated from him.

“Kill him!”

It took her two panic-stricken imperatives before Castiel obeyed. That wouldn’t do at all, she’d have to redo some of his blocks. Maybe do a total overhaul. And she’d have to examine Samandriel’s empty vessel, see exactly where Crowley had poked and prodded to destroy her work so thoroughly. Naomi placated Castiel’s doubt and guilt, made him give the Winchesters a false excuse, then had him bring the small, mangled human body to her. Blood trickled from his vessel’s eye, a testament to the extent Castiel had been damaged. An all-around disaster. Not to mention that now Crowley knew of the angelic portion of the Word of God.

She could handle this. She would.

Samandriel’s vessel would keep, so she focused her attention on fixing Castiel yet again. She wiped and corrected, blocked and rerouted. Thankfully, he didn’t scream this time, mind too fragmented to form a cohesive response to her ministrations. That mark flickered around his grace like a mocking beacon of her failures, the reason Castiel was still here, probably why he couldn’t be fixed. Had their Father given it to him at the beginning of things, or had he earned it somehow? She didn’t know which option was worse.

She needed Castiel to get her to the angel tablet, wherever it was hidden. Esper, Ion, Jehoel, Bartholomew, and Nathaniel were searching for it, but she had little faith in their abilities. She hadn’t given them much thought lately, if she was being honest. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d given any of them a routine correction.

No matter. She brought her thoughts back to the tablet. It should be in Heaven, secure with her. Crowley absolutely could not get his hands on it, but it wouldn’t be safe in the hands of anyone else either. The Winchesters, she admitted grudgingly, she was thinking of the Winchesters and their uncanny ability to insert themselves into the center of world-shattering situations and make them worse. They had no purpose anymore, after spitting in destiny’s face. The Apocalypse would never happen on her Father’s timetable. Her insufferable brothers would never need vessels again. She could have the Winchesters killed, should the need arise. There was no reason to keep them around.

She’d have Castiel do it. Final proof that she’d fixed him. That his loyalty was to Heaven, and to his own family. With that in mind, his new training began.

She focused on Dean Winchester. Once the human he loved best was dead by his hand other humans would be easier, she reasoned. She built convincing automatons of her eldest brother’s perfect vessel and set Castiel loose on them one at a time with lethal orders. It took several attempts to get him to hurt one, even in self-defense.

“I can’t,” Castiel told her with anguish after she’d prevented a Dean from stabbing him with a false angel blade. It wouldn’t have caused him any harm, but he didn’t know that. “I can’t hurt him.”

“You have before,” Naomi plucked a memory of an infuriated Castiel beating the real Dean senseless in a dark alley. “Why is this different?”

“I shouldn’t have done that. That was- wrong.”

“He betrayed you,” Naomi had no opinion on whether Castiel had been justified or not. She didn’t care. “So you punished him.”

“He made a choice. He was in pain, desperate, and I made it worse.”

 _You made it worse, there’s a surprise,_ she thought but said nothing.

She had Deans tell him they didn’t trust him fully, even now. That they would never love him how he wanted. That they would always choose their brother over him, no matter what.

“That’s who you are, Dean,” Castiel told the automatons with sad admiration. “That’s why I love you.”

Truth was getting her nowhere, and she didn’t have time for this. She had yet to thoroughly examine Samandriel’s dead vessel. There was no news of Crowley or his search for the tablet that could be their undoing. The prophet had found a way in the demon tablet to close Hell’s Gates forever, and she knew the Winchesters were going to attempt it. She had no desire for the equivalent to happen to Heaven should Crowley find their tablet first.

Dean had been praying to Castiel ever since the night of Samandriel’s botched rescue. Innocuous things mostly, “Where are you, man?” and “We could really use your help with this one, Cas,” and “Saw something that reminded me of you today, buddy.” Innocuous, but detrimental to Castiel’s current training. She rerouted the prayers to herself, and marveled at the sensation of having a human praying directly to her, as stolen as the feeling was. She was glad humans didn’t pray to her, but it felt nice to pretend that someone was acknowledging her existence.

Castiel’s latest failure was not destroying a Dean who had said nothing, acted like the puppet he was in Naomi’s latest attempt to get through to her stubborn brother. Maybe if she started him off slowly, on things that _looked_ like Dean but were obviously _not_ Dean, then he could ease into killing better and better replicas. She was opening her vessel’s mouth to admonish him when the real Dean’s latest prayer came to her.

“Weird one today, Cas,” Dean’s prayer was full of tired melancholy. “Ever hear of the ‘Knights of Hell’? Fought one that called herself Abaddon. They can’t be killed except by archangels, apparently, so I guess we’re shit out of luck. I trapped her in her meatsuit, chopped her into little pieces, and buried ‘em deep, so that should hold her for a while at least. Not before she killed our grandpa, though. Yeah, weird I know, but I figure if there’s anyone who could appreciate time travel weirdness, it’s you, huh?”

The prayer trailed off and ended in a rush as Naomi found herself on Earth before she could really process the action. A little town in Kansas, the center of the continental United States. A hole of dirt and concrete she’d seen in Dean Winchester’s mind. Where her Destroyer, as gloriously unkillable as Castiel and his pet humans, was buried. She could feel Abaddon beneath her, simmering rage and destruction. Naomi wanted her back. She could fix this, fix Sheol, and then- Sheol and Naomi, partners in the cycle of creation. She could lead Heaven with Sheol at her side, her failures would be made right, Heaven would be as it should. She had so many questions for her partner. How she’d survived, what she’d seen and done in their time apart. Why she’d left in the first place.

_Let me take you home. Come back to me, come back to me, come back to me._

Abaddon’s emotions roiled and shifted. As if she’d heard, as if she was agreeing to Naomi’s proposal. Naomi lifted her hand, ready to pull molecules apart. Ready to raise and restore her Sheol-

No. No, no, no. What in her Father’s Name was she doing? What could she possibly be thinking? Well, that was it, she wasn’t thinking. She’d just reacted to the information, and acted against everything she stood for. This was where Sheol- _Abaddon_ now, not Sheol, never again her Sheol- belonged. She should have been dead, but barring that she needed to be contained as much as her master. Her destruction was no longer tempered by anyone. She wouldn’t come home with Naomi, she would never hear Sheol call her _Pleasant One_ again. Not even Naomi could fix this. It would have been better if Abaddon had actually been dead.

Unmitigated grief that she hadn’t allowed herself to feel when she’d first heard the news of Abaddon’s demise choked her. She returned to Heaven, to Castiel, before she could do any other foolish thing. Castiel was right where she’d left him, crouched on his haunches, sadly watching the fake Dean shuffle around the white warehouse space she’d built for the broken seraph’s training. Anger replaced the grief, and she allowed it, because anger was motivating.

“Get up!”

She hauled Castiel to his feet by the lapels of his vessel’s coat. Gave him a shake.

“You think he’ll ever love you? That he’ll ever choose you?”

“No,” Castiel told her, limp in her hands. “No, but that doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters!” Naomi screamed, aware of her projection, and growing angrier because of it. “You’re a fool, Castiel!”

She dropped him, an idea coming to her. With a thought, she reprogrammed the automaton. Life surged through the Dean on the other end of the long room and he was rushing towards Castiel.

“Cas! Cas, oh my god, I’m so glad I found you!”

Dean pulled Castiel into an intimate embrace, hands drifting lower than a hug between friends would warrant. Castiel groaned in frustration.

“Stop it,” he implored her, struggling to remember her name and shaking his head when he failed. “Please stop it.”

“I’m not here,” she told him and his eyes ghosted over her. “And he mocks you. Kill him, Castiel.”

“I love you so much, Cas,” Dean whispered in the seraph’s ear, nipping gently at his earlobe. “I’ve always loved you.”

“No.”

_Kill him._

“I love you,” the false Dean clutched at Castiel’s lower back.

“No. You don’t,” Castiel’s voice was flat.

“I love you.”

He kissed the corner of Castiel’s lips.

“You’re not Dean,” Castiel’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. “You’re not.”

“I love you.”

Dean went to kiss him on the mouth.

“No!”

Castiel broke violently from the hug, sending the automaton sprawling on his back. The angel was on the man a heartbeat later, growling, angel blade in hand.

“You don’t love me,” he snarled, straddling Dean’s chest and pointing his sword over Dean’s heart. “You don’t!”

“I do, Cas. I do. Please, don’t- ”

Castiel pushed the blade in deeply. The automaton choked on its own blood, then expired. Naomi couldn’t help but imagine her Destroyer in Dean’s place, Naomi straddling the demon’s chest. She didn’t even know what vessel Abaddon was in, but that was inconsequential to her fantasy. Satisfaction swelled inside her.

“Very good,” she allowed Castiel to acknowledge her presence. “Well done.”

Castiel panted and shook more than an angel should. They’d have to work on that. He stared at the corpse he’d made as if expecting it to disappear. Naomi left it. She’d leave every one, a tangible barometer of Castiel’s progress. One for every angel he’d killed, that was fitting. He’d killed his own family for the love of this man. This was justice. A new Dean appeared beside the dead one and Castiel startled.

“Again,” she ordered him.

“Cas? Cas I gotta tell you something.”

“Please no,” he begged in a hollow voice, rising from the first Dean’s bleeding chest to face the second. His fingers tightened around his blade.

“I love you, Cas. I’ve always loved you.”

“Kill him, Castiel. Kill them all. Kill them before they can lie to you.”

Naomi turned her back on the scene, smiling softly when she heard the rustle of Castiel’s trench coat and the scream of the automaton. She left the warehouse by way of the door, her stilettos clicking on the smooth concrete and echoing in the massive simulation space. She shut out Dean Winchester’s prayers after that.

*

One-thousand-and-three corpses of Dean Winchester littered the warehouse floor before Naomi decided Castiel was ready. She knew she’d been wrong about that sort of thing before, but she didn’t have time to second-guess herself. She sent the re-educated seraph to Earth to search for the angel tablet. His methods inevitably drew the Winchester’s attention, just as she’d expected. Just as she’d hoped, she admitted to herself only once before dismissing the spite.

Crowley was in the area, and that was upsetting. The three members of team thorn-in-her-side found his hideout in the town to which Castiel had narrowed his search. Lucifer himself had hidden the tablet there, deep underground, afraid of the ammunition it could hold against him. Crowley wasn’t in his hideout, but the demon Naomi remembered vaguely from two years previously was being held captive there, still in her same vessel. Naomi felt a swell of affection from Castiel towards her, and she marveled at the strangeness that was Castiel. So annoyingly strange.

He didn’t want to kill her, asked not to with badly hidden desperation.

“But working with a demon is- unclean.”

She could tremble at her blatant hypocrisy. But she hadn’t worked with a demon, not really, and she’d loved Sheol before she became Abaddon-

She didn’t make Castiel kill the demon that called herself Meg. She convinced herself it was because Castiel’s affection for Meg was so minimal as to be inconsequential, and the demon would be useful, but those were only half truths. She was relating to Castiel, and it made her pause. She’d been alone for so long, she was as strange and unfixable as he was-

She didn’t have to be alone. She knew where her Destroyer was-

Anger filled her. She barely remembered how to feel another way. Anger, and fear. The numb pursuit of a purpose from which she received meager if any fulfillment, for a mission whose parameters she had long forgotten. That about summed up her emotional range.

Good. That was good. Proper for an angel. She, and Castiel, would do well to remember that. Castiel wouldn’t though, she thought bitterly.

Later, she couldn’t help but believe that she’d cursed herself with that thought.

With the demon’s help, they found the crypt and the tablet encased in a protective stone shield, shut in a box warded against angels. By some providence it was only Castiel and Dean inside, Meg and Sam staying above ground to hold off Crowley. The tablet was almost safe, she was so close. With only minor prodding, she had Castiel point the box out to Dean. A success, for once. Naomi watched it all through Castiel’s eyes, waiting for the right moment. Dean opened the box, took the stone out carefully. Now.

“Kill him,” she told Castiel eagerly.

“Wait, I can get it from him without- ”

Castiel trailed off and unsuccessfully attempted to reason Dean into giving him the stone.

“Kill him,” Naomi said forcefully. Dean was talking to Castiel, trying to get information from him. That was good, she could use that. “Kill him before he tries to lie to you.”

Castiel’s sword appeared in his vessel’s hand.

“I don’t want to,” he told Naomi in her office. “This isn’t right.”

It was right. It was. That tablet was a part of their Father’s Word. That tablet was power. Power for Heaven. With it, she could make everything the way it should be. She could lead the way she should be able to.

Castiel was half-heartedly attacking the man, swinging the sword against the stone-enclosed tablet in Dean’s hands. Dean was yelling. Naomi couldn’t make out what he was saying over her own shouts.

“What have you done to me?” Castiel groaned at her, clutching at his temples. Accusatory, after everything she’d done for him. After everything _he’d_ done to Heaven first. She told him as much, verbally lighting into him as she made him physically light into Dean on Earth.

“I fixed you, Castiel,” Naomi desperately wanted that to be true. “I fixed you!”

Dean tried to put a hand on Castiel’s shoulder. A mistake of which he couldn’t have realized the magnitude. Castiel backhanded him, sending the human flying across the crypt. The angel followed him, attacking with more ferocity.

“Finish it, Castiel.”

She would succeed here, and that success would herald future success. If she could fix Castiel, she could fix Heaven. She could fix Sheol. She could fix _everything-_

Castiel snapped Dean Winchester’s arm, begging Naomi to let him stop all the while. The stone fell to the floor and smashed, revealing the pure tablet underneath. Naomi could feel its power through Castiel, and she knew, somehow knew, that she couldn’t allow any angel to touch it. Not even herself.

Dean was on the ground, battered and bloody and staring at Castiel’s dispassionate face while the seraph raised his sword for a final blow.

“Cas- it’s me,” Dean slurred through broken teeth. “We’re family. We need you. _I_ need you.”

It wasn’t a proclamation of love like she’d made Castiel practice with, but it was close enough. They weren’t family, surely Castiel could see that. Castiel’s family was the Host. He belonged in Heaven.

“You have to choose, Castiel,” she told him, certain of victory. “Us or them.”

She’d always chosen Heaven, even when she hated it. Even when it would have been easier to terminate, or run away like so many of them had. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t understood Castiel until it was too late. They were similar, yes, but they were also very different. She was a good daughter. Castiel was the epitome of the prodigal son. So of course their Father loved him best.

Castiel dropped his sword and reached for the tablet. Naomi didn’t have a chance to forbid him from touching it, as shocked as she was by Castiel’s choice. The minute his vessel’s fingertips brushed the Word there was a blinding light in front of her, brighter than the brightest supernova and angelic grace combined. She screamed, reeling from it. By the time she’d composed herself, her connection to Castiel was gone. She had no idea where he was. She flew to the crypt immediately, but Castiel and the Winchesters were long gone. She found Crowley there instead.

He was wounded, dark essence seeping from his well-dressed vessel’s shoulder. She allowed herself to feel vindication from that. There was no trace of the angel Mammon, but why should that surprise her? He was fully demon now, the self-proclaimed King of Hell to boot. She should smite him here.

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you’re losing your touch,” he teased.

Yes. Yes, she was. Did everyone know? Did they know how tired she was? She was endangering Heaven, and she had no other recourse. She gave Crowley the company line, about everything being under control, Castiel doing what he was supposed to by protecting the tablet. She thought she’d sold it.

“Even from you?”

Crowley smirked, and she knew he hadn’t bought it. She twitched toward him, trying to think of a single reason not to destroy him. Crowley saw her intentions and took a step back.

“Easy, love. If you remember our time in Mesopotamia the way I do, you know I'm a lover, not a fighter.”

He was taunting her. Reminding her that he’d gotten farther with Sheol- _Abaddon-_ then she had. Then she ever would-

_You know where your Destroyer is. You could-_

But she was so tired. Her hackles lowered. What did it matter? Smite Crowley, don’t smite Crowley. There’d either be a new ruler of Hell tomorrow, or else the devil she knew. Besides, wouldn’t it be fitting if those Winchesters figured out how to close Hell while Crowley was on the throne. A failure of epic proportions for him.

“What do you want, you cockroach?”

He tried to make a deal with her, as he’d once made a deal with Castiel, and that was too far. She left him without another word. She paced in her office and yelled at her five. She sent them to find Castiel, but she held little hope that they would. Castiel was hidden from her, and he had unimaginable power in his possession. And what if he teamed up with Crowley again? She remembered the last time he’d held great power. The consequences of his hubris. She could understand his anger with her, really she could, but it was her job. She had been protecting Heaven, and Earth, from Castiel. She had been protecting him from himself.

She waited and worried. She was sitting at her desk, telekinetically manipulating the silver balls of her Newton’s cradle, when Jehoel came through the door. She didn’t have to say anything, her vessel’s pensive face said it all, the small shake of her head completely unnecessary. Jehoel was clearly expecting Naomi’s wrath, but it didn’t come. Naomi dismissed Jehoel with as much loquacity as the rest of their conversation. She sat and brooded for a long time after that.

*

Naomi stirred herself out of her funk when Bartholomew came to report that there was still no news of their renegade. She sternly commanded him to keep trying and dismissed him. She needed to get her head back in the game. She hated delegating, she’d do this herself. She couldn’t track the Winchesters, but she could keep tabs on the prophet. She started observing Kevin Tran as he translated the demon table on a houseboat in Missouri. She was surprised to find that the Winchesters hadn’t put up angel warding. That was unexpected, perhaps their affection for Castiel was deeper than she’d originally thought. She could use that.

She heard from the angel she had tailing Crowley that the King had murdered a mercenary Reaper after they had helped Sam Winchester get into Purgatory. From her observations of Kevin and his tablet, she figured out that the younger Winchester was trying for the second Trial, and from what she knew of Dean Winchester she knew the information of Sam’s whereabouts would be very useful. She could work this whole situation to her purposes. All she needed was five minutes alone with Dean.

The oldest Winchester finally made his way to the houseboat and Naomi approached him once the prophet had cloistered himself elsewhere. The real Dean was so very different from her automatons. No wonder she’d failed. As he spoke, rebuffing her offers of collaboration and spouting off about things he didn’t understand, she could see that space in his soul that had been created to hold her eldest brother. It was distracting. She did what she’d come to do. Encouraged him and his brother to go through with the Trials. Planted the seeds of doubt in Dean’s mind regarding Castiel’s trustworthiness. Told the hunter the truth about Sam’s way into Hell. Left him with the assertion that he could trust her.

She waited and watched as Dean did exactly what she’d thought he would, making sure his brother and the rescued soul from Hell came back safely from Purgatory. When Crowley tried to thwart them as she’d anticipated, she was there to stop him. She almost destroyed him when he spat the word _bureaucrat_ at her, but restrained herself. Her show of power scared Crowley off.

She wasn’t a bureaucrat. She almost wished she could be, but she wasn’t. Here she was, in the field, the stink of humanity surrounding her. She’d worked so hard, sacrificed so much.

The soul ascended to Heaven with a little extra flourish for the Winchester’s benefit. She smiled pleasantly at Dean, then Sam. She could see the space for Lucifer inside him, but she could also see the toll the Trials were taking on his soul. They were killing him, and she didn’t know why that surprised her. She was well familiar with her Father’s cruelty. Still, they’d have to hurry. Sam didn’t look like he had much longer. A shame, but an acceptable sacrifice.

“I told you you could trust me.”

She smiled at Dean again and vanished from their perception. She watched Sam say the incantation to complete the second Trial. She watched another chunk of his soul wilt. So close to the end of Hell. Of Crowley. Of Lucifer. She returned to Heaven.

*

She was barely holding it together. Crowley had managed to abduct Kevin Tran and his tablet out from under her angels’ noses before he could translate the last Trial. There was no way to close Hell without a prophet, nor was there a way to translate the angelic part of the Word once it was recovered. Esper and Ion bickered about whose job it had been to watch the prophet, and she couldn’t remember who was right. It frightened her. What if she hadn’t assigned _anyone_ to the prophet? What if- ?

She angrily reassigned the two to looking for Castiel full-time, and had Jehoel look for the prophet instead. She waited and brooded, watching the Winchesters when they appeared on her radar. She didn’t want the younger one biting it before he could close Hell. If he died, another human would have to start all over again. She would have healed him, but she couldn’t. Something about the Trials wouldn’t let her. Typical of her Father. She wondered if the information about the bearer’s likely death was included in the tablet’s instructions for the Trials. Probably not. She went to Sam in his dreams and attempted to encourage him, trying not to see the Lightbringer when she looked at his soul. His dreams were full of red and black and deepening futility.

“Who are you?” Sam asked one night as she watched him bar a door against the creeping shadows beyond it. “I keep seeing you, who are you?”

“My name is Naomi,” she told him, surprised for a moment when the trigger phrase didn’t affect him. She had scant experience in dealing with non-angels.

“I know you, don’t I?”

She could see the gears shifting. She went forward, closed the door, made it disappear from his dreamscape. There was still red and black, but it crouched in the corners, away from the growing light.

“Shh,” she kissed him on the forehead and she felt his soul relax infinitesimally, like he desperately wanted the comfort but would not allow himself to take it. “Don’t be afraid.”

“You’re an angel,” he spoke flatly, accusatory. “I’ve seen you.”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“Leave me alone,” he turned his head away with a sigh. “I don’t want you here.”

“Your brother trusts in angels. He prays. Why not you?”

Sam barked with bitter laughter. There was pounding on the walls of the red and black room.

“I used to. Then I met you guys.”

“You don’t even like Castiel?”

“Not at first. Now, he’s cool, I guess. I don’t get him, really. And I don’t think he likes me all that much.”

She wondered that he couldn’t see Castiel’s devotion to him. Different from the devotion to his older brother, but devotion nonetheless.

“You’re wrong,” she told him bluntly. “Take heart.”

“Leave, please.”

She did. She didn’t return.

*

Castiel had been utilizing an ingenious trick to keep off of Heaven’s radar. Using a combination of math, bilocation, his greater knowledge of humanity, and his oft-lauded free will he was using a restaurant chain called Biggerson’s to elude Esper and Ion’s pursuit. When Ion brought the information to her, sloppy with irritation, Naomi saw the solution instantly.

“Make him stop.”

“Make- him- stop- ?”

“Oh, use your imagination,” she snapped impatiently. “You were allowed to keep that, were you not?”

“Among other things,” Ion groused as he composed himself and prepared to fulfill his orders.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Naomi stared at the empty space where Ion had been. Whichever location of Biggerson’s he chose, she knew he’d take his frustration out on its patrons. All the better. The seraph was pathetically predictable in this regard. The humans’ pain would call Castiel quickly.

Esper and Ion worked fast. They contacted her and she flew to a Biggerson’s in Santa Fe. Blood and carnage decorated the gaudy restaurant interior. Bodies were strewn everywhere. There was one survivor, a woman with her eyes burned out, repeating her message to Castiel over and over again. It was grating, and she made the human shut up with a snap of her fingers. Castiel made a small, grieved noise from the chair he was bound to. Naomi rounded on him.

“We were supposed to be their shepherds, not their murderers,” he told her reproachfully. As if he knew.

She tried to disabuse him of that notion. Let out all her frustration on him. He didn’t budge. She sent Ion to search the other Biggerson’s while she and Esper remained with Castiel. She’d have to reprogram him completely, the angel tablet had destroyed all of her work inside him. But she could still see that helix flickering in his grace. It was driving her mad.

He wouldn’t break. She had Esper hit him a few times. Paltry interrogation, especially compared to what was to come. She’d make him a blank slate. He didn’t need to remember anything-

Ion returned empty-handed and Crowley appeared a moment later, killing Esper and lacklusterly wounding Ion. She knew they’d been betrayed. She should have seen it- but wasn’t that the story of her life lately? She left before Crowley could kill her, too. She would deal with Ion and his demon master later. She knew Castiel wouldn’t give up the tablet to anyone, that gave her some time.

She almost went to Kansas. Let her Destroyer burn everything. To Hell with it.

She wondered when her self-control would shatter like everything else was shattering around her.

*

Castiel killed Ion in his escape, rejoining the Winchesters in their unknown location. To the best of her knowledge, he still had the tablet. The prophet was rescued and had also fallen from Naomi’s radar. There were rumors that the last Trial had been translated, and that it entailed curing a demon. That caught Naomi’s interest. She’d never heard of such a thing, but if it were true. If it were possible- Naomi thought about Sheol’s lost grace. A pitiful daydream, but it helped her get through the next few days.

Her fantasy ended abruptly when she felt herself being summoned by someone on Earth. She was puzzled, who on Earth knew her name? The Winchesters, but that seemed doubtful. Castiel, even more doubtful. A trap by Crowley, but her recon had shown him to be in a town called Prosperity, Indiana. She answered the summons when the uncomfortable tugging on her grace became unbearable. She found herself in a wooded area, somewhere in Mississippi. It was wet, her stilettos sank into the mud where she appeared, and insects buzzed lazily around her head. She saw the flash of fire, had been expecting it, and leapt from the circle of holy flames before it could close. She flew in a fury to the place she’d seen the fire emanate from, placing her drawn blade against the throat of the figure standing there with a lighter in its hand.

“I’m impressed, angel. You haven’t lost your edge.”

The woman in front of her looked like something from one of the humans’ horror movies. She was of similar height to Naomi’s vessel, clad all in dirty black clothes, including a leather jacket. Her brilliant red hair had once been artfully arranged, but was now mussed and asymmetrical, strands falling in her face. The makeup on that face was smudged and running. Blood coated her throat and neck, which had been roughly stitched back onto her body. Similar stitching connected her wrists to her arms. Naomi took all the details in, shocked. The woman’s distasteful T-shirt read _The Devil Made Me Do It,_ a provocatively posed cartoon of a female devil underneath it. A fitting T-shirt for the demon inside this body.

“Sheol.”

Naomi’s grip tightened on her blade. The point trembled just above the angry red line where the demon’s head had been cleaved from her body. The demon rolled her eyes.

“You’re never gonna get that right, are you?”

“Abaddon,” Naomi amended. It was better that she think of the demon as Abaddon. It would be easier to kill her. She tried to steel herself for what had to be done.

“That’s not gonna work on me,” Abaddon said mildly, eyes flitting down to the blade at her throat. “I’m pretty much unkillable.”

Naomi wanted to believe that.

“Pretty much?”

“Well, there are a couple ways, but a lady never tells,” Abaddon grinned wickedly with a flash of smeared red lipstick and brilliant teeth.

“Except, you’re not a lady, are you?”

“True. But neither are you.”

“I never claimed to be.”

“Hmm, I do like the wild ones,” Abaddon licked her lips. “And I know you do, too.”

“What do you want?”

“Why, Naomi,” Abaddon actually seemed hurt. “I haven’t seen you in a couple thousand years. I know you missed me. _I_ missed _you.”_

“I hate to disappoint you, Destroyer, but I didn’t miss you.”

Haughty and cold, she would have convinced anyone else. Not her Destroyer.

“Oh, angel,” Abaddon shook her head slightly, mindful of the blade near her stitches. “Don’t you know lying’s a sin?”

“I’m not lying,” Naomi lied.

“I heard you. Deep underground with the worms, in little bitty pieces. I heard you standing over me. I felt you. I knew what you were thinking about.”

“No, you didn’t,” Naomi whispered desperately, giving away the last of her game.

“I’m flattered, really. That an uptight goody-good like you would even consider setting me free,” Abaddon laughed. “I love you, too.”

Naomi couldn’t bear to hear it said so flippantly. She took the blade away from Abaddon’s throat and stepped away from the demon.

“What do you want She- Abaddon?”

“Good girl, you learn quickly,” Abaddon beamed. “And, funnily enough, I was the one telling the truth in this situation. I wanted to say ‘hello’. I missed my Pleasant One.”

She spoke with light teasing, but there was fond sincerity in the pet name that filled Naomi with warmth.

“I missed you, too, my Destroyer,” she said softly, and wondered at the lump rising in her vessel’s throat. She knew of tears, but had never shed them. She’d never seen an angel weep. Angels had other ways to grieve.

The grief she wouldn’t let herself feel rose inside her, and it almost overcame her. Fear saved her. Abaddon might be unkillable by traditional means, but she could still be locked away when the Winchesters slammed the gates of Hell forever.

Why? She’d gotten her Destroyer back. Hadn’t needed to blaspheme to do so, she’d waited and Abaddon had come back to her, but why now? Why now, when she’d just be ripped away again?

She was being punished. Her Father was still out there, and He was angry with her. All she had done was what she’d been told, what she knew to be her duty, and He was still turning His favor from her.

“Abaddon,” she began, and she didn’t know what to say. The warning about the Trials was on her lips, but that would be the final straw. A blasphemy she’d never come back from. “I- You- ”

If she told her Destroyer, she might as well rip out her grace and join the demon in eternal damnation. To her consternation, the thought had a macabre appeal to her. _You’re slipping,_ she reminded herself. Slipping into Hell.

“Spit it out, baby,” Abaddon’s tenderness was mocking, but if that was the only way Naomi could have her Destroyer’s affection, so be it. “You look constipated.”

She couldn’t. She couldn’t. It wasn’t who she was. Maybe that was the crux of her punishment. She had to be herself, for all eternity. Heaven needed her to do the right thing. And that was allowing the Winchesters to close Hell. No more souls would be damned. No more Sheols would become Abaddons.

But her Destroyer still knew her. Their bond, untested for millennia, remained.

“Are you- ?” Surprise turned to snide delight. “Were you going to warn me about the archangels’ meatsuits closing Hell down? You were, weren’t you?”

Abaddon cackled. Her smoky true form danced with glee around the frightened soul inside her vessel.

“I didn’t,” Naomi said quietly. She was ashamed, both for wanting to tell and for not telling. “I didn’t tell you.”

“You are a strange one, Naomi. My favorite of the halo brigade.”

“How did you know?”

Naomi continued to speak in that quiet voice. She felt so small. It was freeing, not to be in charge for once.

“The brothers Winchester dug me up, sewed me back together, and told me they were gonna cure me of my wicked, demon ways,” she pouted alluringly, then cocked her reattached head awkwardly at Naomi. “Can they?”

“I don’t know. Probably. They’re not to be underestimated.”

Abaddon scoffed.

“They’re only humans, even if they are prime vessel livestock. Easy on the eyes, too. Oh, don’t make that face at me! A girl’s got needs.”

The demon thought for a moment as Naomi smoothed her moue of distaste into a more neutral look.

“You’d want them to, wouldn’t you?”

“Want them to what?”

 _“Cure_ me. That would solve all your problems.”

“I’ll admit, the thought had crossed my mind as a positive.”

“This is who I am, Naomi,” anger flashed in Abaddon’s eyes. “This is who I want to be!”

“Why?” Naomi matched her anger. Heat rolled off her vessel in waves and Abaddon flinched, but held her ground. “Why? Because Lucifer wanted you to be that way?”

“Leave him out of this!” Abaddon snarled. “I never want to hear that name again!”

“Where was that attitude a few billion years ago?” Naomi muttered bitterly.

“He used us! He made us into what he hated, and discarded us at the first opportunity. Fuck him, he and Michael got what they deserved. Let ‘em rot.”

“So undo it,” Naomi pleaded desperately. “Become who you were, before the Lightbringer deceived you. Let the Winchesters cure you, and let me take you home and fix you.”

“No,” Abaddon’s eyes narrowed. “Isn’t that just like you? Fucking control freak. I never let you get your claws in my head, and I don’t plan to start now. Although, I hear you don’t take consent into account anymore these days.”

“Yes, and I suppose you got that woman’s permission before you jumped inside her skin, hmm?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Abaddon bragged. “She volunteered and I accepted. I liked her. She reminded me of you, honestly. So much potential, wasted in a world that wanted to crush her. Useful, and so nauseatingly loyal.”

“I don’t believe you,” Naomi spat.

“About what? Oh, you know what, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not.”

They were fighting so soon, when they didn’t have much time left together. Maybe that was good. Better to make a clean break. Abaddon would never want Naomi’s help or salvation. Naomi needed to accept that. Why couldn’t she accept that?

“I made myself, and I like who I am,” Abaddon declared, and Naomi heard nothing but sincerity. “I wish you liked who I am, too, but I don’t need that.”

“I don’t need you, either,” Naomi lied.

“Okay” Abaddon shrugged callously. “Whatever you want to tell yourself, angel.”

“Goodbye, Abaddon. Enjoy your short stint of freedom. I won’t mourn you.”

She unfurled her wings.

“Do you like who you are, Naomi? Is it who you want to be?”

Abaddon didn’t ask with malice, but her questions cut Naomi deeper than any of her mockery had. She fled to her office. Weakness welled up in her vessel’s eyes and she angrily blinked it away.

_One thing at a time. Make sure Hell gets closed, then worry about the next obstacle to your job. Rinse and repeat, forever and ever and ever-_

She sent the Newton’s cradle swinging and lost herself in the rhythmic motion.

*

The Winchesters took Crowley hostage in order to perform the third Trial on him. He would hate that, considering how long he’d waited to become human in the first place. It was gratifying.

She’d had no news of Abaddon. She was both relieved and disappointed. Thinking about her Destroyer only brought pain, however, so she refrained from doing so if at all possible.

Nathaniel brought her news of Castiel soon after Crowley’s capture. Not only Castiel, but Metatron. Naomi hadn’t heard that name since the Scribe had fled. She was excited to finally get inside his head. She might not need the tablets if she had their transcriber.

It was strange, though, his sudden appearance. Especially now, and with Castiel. She resolved to proceed cautiously.

She took a group of angels, her remaining three plus a few extra, and found the runaways in a bar booth. She didn’t think she could get both of them, especially since neither was programmed to respond to her trigger phrase, so she focused on retrieving Metatron. She ordered one of the angels to kill Castiel, knowing how pointless that was, but figuring it would serve as a distraction while they took the Scribe. That proved unnecessary when the overprotective bartender prevented a fight from breaking out, and then Metatron went with her quietly. The angels left Castiel alone in the bar. Naomi had them help her strap Metatron to her chair, then dismissed them.

He’d come far too easily. Her suspicions grew.

“I know you,” Metatron said. His vessel’s voice was shrill and weasly.

“We’ve never officially met,” she responded pleasantly.

He said her name, intoned her purpose to her, and she hid her discomfort. So few knew or remembered her name. But the Scribe had left before that became necessary. His desertion had, in fact, been one of the catalysts that had necessitated her current system. She retrieved her drill and made her way to his side. Anger and fear blazed in his eyes, and before she began his long-awaited debriefing she had to ask him some of the questions that had been knocking around inside her since Nathaniel had told her of Metatron’s reappearance. All those burning _whys?_

Metatron paused for a moment, thinking over her questions.

“‘Of the blessings set before you, make your choice and be content,’” he quoted, smirking condescendingly when she didn’t respond. “Not a big reader, are we?”

Naomi didn’t bother asking him why he thought an excerpt from a Samuel Johnson novel was an appropriate response to her questions. She could find out the answers for herself. She began Metatron’s correction. He screamed and thrashed, but his mind gave easily. She had never been inside it before. It was a challenge, and it thrilled her.

His mind was a mass of stories. She dug through the familiar and obscure, through Metatron’s time among the humans, trying to find those early stories the Scribe had written from the Mouth of God. She found them eventually. The Word of God, concerning everything. There were portions on Leviathan, Demons, and Angels, as well as Humans and many more she hadn’t known of.

“Overwhelming, hmm?” Metatron spat.

Naomi ignored him and continued. She focused on the most important two. The Demon tablet was just as the prophet had translated.

“Nasty surprise for the fellow who finishes those Trials,” Metatron said spitefully. “He’ll pretty much puke up his insides and die, but hey, no more Hell.”

“But why?”

“Ultimate sacrifice, the way our Father wanted it. He was a piece of work, as evidenced by all the apples that didn’t fall far from the tree.”

She moved on. It was the Angel portion that concerned her most. The information that Castiel had control over.

“That Castiel guy is a _chump,”_ Metatron told her conversationally, grunting through the pain. “Either he’s dumb as dirt, or you’ve been a little too trigger-happy with that brain probe of yours. Maybe it’s a little of both?”

She continued to ignore him, perusing the Scribe’s memories of writing the Angel tablet. It contained information about the different types of angels. Their Father’s purpose for them. _To protect His creation, each in their own way._ Well, yes, fine, she knew that-

Something felt wrong. She replayed the words in her head. _To protect His creation, each in their own way._ Creation, not just Heaven. Not in one uniform way, in their own way. A part of her crumbled in terror. She’d been wrong. Not just her, the archangels. For so long, so long, and that emptiness inside her had grown and she’d ignored it, made everything worse-

And she’d known. Deep down, she’d known. Blasphemer that she was, she’d gone along with everything. She was guilty. She had no excuse. She’d tried to blame it on Sheol, on Lucifer, on Michael, on God Himself, but she knew. The fault was her own.

She was pulled from that despair into a new one when she saw the next part of the Word. The steps to cast the Host out of Heaven. She connected the instructions with the images she’d seen in Metatron’s thoughts concerning Castiel. All the pieces came together and she reeled from the Scribe in horror, disentangling her instrument from his grace and haphazardly discarding it on a rolling table beside her. He was almost done with his plan. No wonder he’d come along so willingly. He knew he was going to win, and he didn’t fear her. He knew she wouldn’t kill him, not when she hadn’t exhausted the possibility of fixing him. She’d brought him to Heaven, right where he wanted to be.

“You’ve been digging,” he sneered, blood leaking from his vessel’s eye.

Once again, she couldn’t ask him anything but _why?_

Revenge was the simple answer. He missed their Father, as they all did, but then they’d run him from Heaven. Now he’d return the favor. There were no more archangels, so she would have to suffer most.

There was one small hope in all this. He needed Castiel to complete the ritual. They had the last Nephil’s heart, and Castiel was collecting the bow of a Cupid right now, but Castiel himself was the final component. The grace of an angel in love with a human. She had to find him, beg his forgiveness, convince him that Metatron was a deceiver. Maybe she could get Dean Winchester to vouch for her- and suddenly she knew what she would say to convince him. She left Metatron bound and bleeding in her office and went to find Castiel.

She pinpointed his location in the mind of a Cupid who had just given him zir bow. She was there in a heartbeat, hands raised in surrender.

“I’m not here to fight you, Castiel. Not anymore.”

He was unsurprisingly suspicious of her motives, and she could hardly blame him. He was there with Dean Winchester, who was equally suspicious, but willing to hear her out. She could hear Kevin Tran’s voice wafting through the speaker of his cell phone. Castiel refused to believe her, adamantly defended Metatron’s integrity against her perceived lies, and Naomi suddenly saw Castiel through new eyes. A thorn in her side, yes, the angelic equivalent of a head-splitting migraine, but as their Father had created him. She had been jealous and spiteful of the prodigal son, all the while neglecting to acknowledge her own sins.

She faltered when she thought of those sins. Horrible and numerous. There would be no forgiveness for her, nor should there be, but she could think on that later. She could do a good thing here, save Heaven in the true spirit of her mission. She felt tears on her face, and she didn’t fight it. She cried for billions of years of grief. She cried for Sheol, Jophiel, Raphael, Samandriel, and all those angels whose names she didn’t know or remember. She cried for the humans she’d disdained and treated as expendable out of jealousy. She cried for an absent Father and His cruelty. She cried for herself. All those hard, ugly pieces she’d made herself in pursuit of a love she’d never attain.

Castiel went to attack her, but the seeds she’d planted in Dean Winchester’s mind bore fruit. He put a hand on Castiel’s shoulder, and Castiel stopped. She was glad, if selfishly, that she hadn’t managed to break their bond.

“Our mission was to protect what God created,” she admitted to Castiel. “I don't know when we forgot that.”

It had been forgotten so long ago, but she suddenly had a memory of dancing through the stars, Sheol at her side, suffused with exhilarating purpose. She let the memory swell inside her for a moment, a combination of angel and human desire, until she pushed it away to focus on the task at hand. Addressing the Winchester, she pulled out her ultimate leverage.

“If Sam completes those trials, he is going to die.”

And if her motives were not entirely selfless, if her knowledge of this fact had been held longer than she was letting on, well, she could work on that.

She saw the panic in Dean’s eyes, and knew that he’d suspected it, but not dared to put words to his fears. He would believe her. She’d done a much better job on him than she’d done on Castiel, her actual charge. She was a failure. She accepted that. She’d work on that once she got through to Castiel. She had to get through to Castiel.

“If you want back in, truly, I will listen,” Naomi promised, leaving him to think about it. She knew her presence would only confuse and anger him. She’d let his favorite human talk sense into him. Even if Castiel didn’t believe her, never forgave her, none of that mattered as long as she kept him away from Metatron.

She seriously entertained thoughts of killing the Scribe. That wasn’t part of her purpose, but maybe this was one time where that didn’t matter. Maybe this was the way she could save Heaven, for all the other angels, and humans, whose undeserved deaths she’d had a hand in.

He wasn’t in the chair where she’d left him. She cursed herself for being overconfident yet again. No matter, he couldn’t have gone far. She’d get help to track him down and-

Pain seared in the back of her vessel’s skull, penetrating deep inside her grace. She was vaguely aware of the whir of her drill and an odious voice.

“How do you like it, you stupid- ?”

Then there was nothing but the pain.

*

It was a part of her, or had been once. It knew everything she’d done. It accused her with the screams of her siblings- her _victims-_ and all she could do was listen. It was dark, then it was light, then it was dark again, but there was nothing to see no matter which. Sometimes she felt like she was floating, but then she could feel her vessel’s cheek pressed against a hard surface. She grew accustomed to the pain eventually, but she never got used to those screams. They never stopped. She’d long ceased calling out apologies and promises of restitution. They were just words. Empty words. She’d made her trade in silver-tongued lies and twisted half-truths. Why should her treacherous words save her now?

Maybe this was Hell. Her punishment was eternal damnation with the proof of her failures. Eternal damnation without her Destroyer. Fitting.

Sometimes she missed her Newton’s cradle. It was bizarre, and wholly inappropriate given the circumstances, but as she lay unmoving, listened to the screams, and felt the drill she knew was jammed in the back of her vessel’s head, she wanted to hear the familiar clack of those silver balls just one more time.

She felt pain throb inside her grace, and she sat up screaming when her vision came back to her. She was in her chair, behind her desk, a pool of her vessel’s blood dried thick and brown on the surface. She felt her vessel’s skin knit and heal with the removal of her drill. The hateful instrument clattered to the floor behind her, dropped from the swirling black smoke that was Abaddon. Naomi turned to her Destroyer, gasping.

“What- ?”

_< That dick thought he could mess with you. Only **I** get to mess with you. >_

She remembered. She was afraid.

“Did he- is Heaven- ?”

_< Oh, yeah, all the little angels’ wings got clipped.>_

Naomi shut her eyes against a new onslaught of tears. She could still feel her wings, though. She hadn’t been included in the banishing ritual. Metatron had really thought her dead.

_< Cheer up, Pleasant One. I killed him for you. I **destroyed** him. >_

She said it with great pride. Naomi thought she should feel regret, but she really, really didn’t.

_< That was okay, right? I didn’t step on your toes there? You weren’t planning on **fixing** him? >_

“No. No, I wasn’t. Thank you.”

Naomi stood, surveying her office. The furniture she’d constructed was slashed and one of the chairs was upended, the glass of the windows smashed to reveal the bright nothingness beyond. The ashen remains of Metatron’s wings were burned into the white tile. The only twinge of grief she felt was for the remains of her Newton’s Cradle, the metal balls scattered over the floor. She found she hated this office as much as her instrument. She never wanted to see it again.

“How long was I out?”

_< Couple weeks in human time. Everything’s crazy on Earth, all those pissed off angels running around. For only a couple hundred, you guys can really fuck shit up.>_

“We have to get them back,” Naomi started pacing as she outlined her strategy. “Find out a way to reopen Heaven and restore the Host’s wings.”

She paused, looking at Abaddon with a slew of new questions.

“Wait, what happened with the Trials? How did you get in here?”

_< Whoa, okay. You’re welcome for saving you.>_

“I believe I already thanked you for that.”

_< Fine. The Trials were a bust. I didn’t succeed in stopping them, but they flopped anyway. Kinda glad, ‘cause my fabulous meatsuit got deep-fried when I went after Crowley and I owe that youngest Winchester boy a flaying.>_

“So, Sam Winchester’s alive?”

_< Don’t know, don’t care. Actually, no I hope he is. So I can rectify the fact.>_

Naomi hastily changed the subject.

“How’d you get into Heaven if it’s closed?”

_< It’s closed to angels, not demons. Not even those of us that used to be angels. Plus, that Metatron isn’t terribly competent. Well, **wasn’t.** >_

Abaddon laughed. Her dark form billowed like rippling water.

“What are you doing here, Abaddon, truly? What do you want from me?”

_< I miss you. I want my Pleasant One back. I destroy, and I revel in it, but something’s missing. Destruction without the potential for new life means nothing. I’ve been fighting the balance. Instant gratification has become- boring. I hate that.>_

“Oh,” Naomi said stupidly, that lump catching in her throat again. She realized the bitter paradox of their Father’s cruelty. That He had made them to be this way, then pulled His favor from them when He decided He didn’t like what He’d created. Any attempts to change themselves would feel wrong, unfulfilling of how they’d been made.

Perhaps she was being too harsh with Him. Perhaps He had been as over His head as she was now, His uncontrollable creation gone amok. But she wouldn’t run like He had.

 _< Now, don’t go reading too much into that,>_ Abaddon warned, smoke bristling. _< None of that mushy bullshit, although I’m down to fool around if you are. I’m talking about what I want. I want you. You complete me. I’ve tried to redefine myself my whole existence, succeeded mostly, and I’m glad. All that’s missing is you.>_

“I’ve missed you, too. I needed you. I- love you.”

_< See, mushy bullshit already. I can’t promise you that. I don’t know if I believe in love. But I want you. Is that enough?>_

“Yes,” Naomi agreed, because it was.

_< Also, I need a place to hide for a little bit until things die down. What with Crowley and the angels. Can I crash with you?>_

“What?”

 _< **Inside** you, Naomi, >_ Abaddon giggled crudely. _< Can I share that body with you? I only ask because you’re more powerful than me, you can shield me from detection. Temporary arrangement until I can find a suitable new meatsuit. Or maybe I can get that old one back? Josie’s soul’s long gone, but I did grow fond of her body.>_

Naomi thought. It was wrong. Unclean. She couldn’t. She shouldn’t.

“Yes. As long as you want.”

Maybe this way she could convince Abaddon not to destroy what didn’t need destroying. The younger Winchester or another innocent meatsuit taken against their will. They could find Abaddon an empty vessel, like Castiel had done all those years ago in Mesopotamia. Or, they could be as one for the rest of eternity.

Abaddon poured down her vessel’s throat in a rush of silky black smoke. Naomi staggered back into the upright visitor’s chair. The demon was careful not to encroach on the angel’s grace at first, but Naomi pulled her close, their essences merging. Not for correction, for re-education, nor for lies. For what she wanted; what they both wanted. Abaddon thrummed in contentment.

_Why, Naomi, if I didn’t know any better I’d say you were getting fresh with little old me._

Arousal spiked simultaneously inside Naomi’s grace and in her vessel’s flesh. It was only her feeling it this time. There was no human soul to take the blame. And maybe this wasn’t the way it was meant to be, the way their Father had originally intended, but it was what had come about.

 _Naughty, naughty angel,_ Abaddon purred. _Do you want me to take care of you?_

Yes, yes, yes. Her desire echoed inside of her. She didn’t want to fight it any longer.

Bright grace and dark smoke coiled around each other, contained in one body. There was a vibrating between her legs, over her vessel’s pointed nipples. She felt Abaddon take control of her hands, and she allowed it. It felt so wonderful not to be in charge. So ecstatically wonderful. Her hands unbuttoned her blazer and shirt, groped at her breasts underneath the beige bra that contained them. One hand slipped the button of her pants open, diving inside the silky lingerie beneath. A finger stroked and teased and Naomi felt like she would explode in a supernova of light and heat and pleasure. She cried out in ecstasy and astonishment when she climaxed, filling the approximation of an office with dazzling light. She heard Abaddon cry out inside her, tendrils of black smoke leaking from mouth, ears, eyes. Their shared vessel collapsed boneless in the chair, panting and trembling.

“Holy shit, that was amazing,” Naomi heard Abaddon say with her vessel’s mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever come so hard. You may just be stuck with me for awhile, angel.”

Naomi almost asked about other sexual partners her Destroyer had been with. Crowley? Lucifer? She unconsciously went to take the information herself, pluck it from Abaddon’s mind like she’d done to so many others so many times before-

No, she told herself. Not anymore. Not like that. It was none of her business, anyway.

“Say something,” Abaddon wheedled. “Tell me how I rocked your socks off.”

_It was- pleasant._

“Pleasant? No, _you’re_ pleasant. Sometimes. But that was fucking awesome.”

_Yes, alright. That was- fucking awesome._

“That’s better. And don’t you forget it.”

They sat and recovered their faculties together. Naomi spoke first, retaking control of her vessel’s voice as she stood and fixed her clothes with a thought.

“We should get to work.”

_That’s my Naomi. All work and no play, baby._

“Yes, but what about all play and no work?”

_That’s why you need me. And why I guess I need you, too, whatever._

Naomi smirked.

“You know my goals, for Heaven and the angels. What about yours? Please remember that I have the right to disagree.”

She added the last part hastily, remembering who she was talking to.

 _I thought I might raze the power structures of Hell to the ground,_ Abaddon mused nonchalantly. _I haven’t decided whether I want to take over or not. I go back and forth. Either way, the plan includes Crowley’s head on a stick._

“I can get behind that.”

_I thought you might._

Heaven had been unravelling for so long. Long before this newest, seemingly insurmountable mess. She could fix it- no, she could help restore it. Clean it up, attempt some penance for what she had done. Find a new, better leader among the angels. One who had both the ability and the desire to lead-

She almost laughed when she realized how much she was sounding like Castiel.

Except that was fine, too. Everything was fine now that she had her partner at her side, closer than ever, and even if she went by a different name, Abaddon was still her Destroyer. A better, self-made Destroyer. Naomi thought it was time to join her in that. She could remember some of how it had been, at the beginning of things. When purpose was clear and the mission concrete. She could use that to fix what she’d done, or allowed to be done. That was what she wanted. That was what she chose. Parts of her rebelled against the notion, against the perceived blasphemy, but she fought them. If their Father didn’t like it, He could come back and stop them.

_We gonna stand here all century, or what?_

“Don’t forget, I can kick you out whenever I want to,” Naomi threatened pleasantly.

Two sets of wings unfurled, merging, and carried them out of the void.


End file.
